“No, she is not entirely unhappy—I can see that,” he thought. “What will she gain? A house on the best street; a man twice her age, and her father's blessing. Bah! It isn't much, though it counts for more than I.”
He turned and gazed out of the window. How many times he had done so when his day's work was finished and he was happy, tired, satisfied. He was looking on a different world—a world he had never viewed before. The coldness was only cold. There was no contrasting thought of warmth and cheer. It was bleak and lonely—only that!
He raised the letter to his lips suddenly and kissed it.
“I loved her!” he thought. “I still love her—and I hope she is happy.” He drew forward a sheet of note-paper, took up his pen, and dipping it in the ink, began to write an answer to her letter—his farewell to her and love, and the hope born and created of love.
When the letter was written, he put her letter—the last he should ever receive—with others of hers that he had kept.
“When she is his wife, I shall burn them,” he muttered. “Till then, I shall keep them here. It can do no harm.”
He marveled how he got through the days that followed. They came and found him, unable to write, wretched, but so composed his mother imagined his grief less than it was. But he was madly restless. There was no peace for him save in movement. Night after night he tramped the streets. Day after day, with a gun on his shoulder, he roamed the woods, about the town and by the river. The gun served for an excuse. It was never fired. In fact it was never even loaded.
He could not work—and work was usually his refuge in periods of distress. Now it was changed. He could only await the day she would marry Shelden.
“When it is over with it will be the same as if I had not loved her,” he assured himself.
One afternoon as he was going toward his home, he came on Geoffrey Ballard face to face. Not the splendid creature to whom he had been accustomed, but Geoff, the seedy and disreputable.