The reverse, unsightly side of the picture he would not so much as glance at. Time enough when he was again flung out on that merciless, unrecognizing world he had come to loathe; loathe and dread. When that time came it would taste exceeding bitter in his mouth. All the more reason, then, to let the present furnish sweet food for retrospect; food that would offset the aloes of retribution. Thus Garrison philosophized.
And, though but vaguely aware of the fact, this philosophy of procrastination (but another form of selfishness) was the spawn of a supposition; the supposition that his love for Sue Desha was not returned; that it was hopeless, absurd. He was not injuring her. He was the moth, she the flame. He did not realize that the moth can extinguish the candle.
He had learned some of life's lessons, though the most difficult had been forgotten, but he had yet to understand the mighty force of love; that it contains no stagnant quality. Love, reciprocal love, uplifts. But there must be that reciprocal condition to cling to. For love is not selfishness on a grand scale, but a glorified pride. And the fine differentiation between these two words is the line separating the love that fouls from the love that cleanses.
And even as Garrison was fighting out the night with his sleepless thoughts, Sue Desha was in the same restless condition. Mr. Waterbury had arrived. His generous snores could be heard stalking down the corridor from the guest-chamber. He was of the abdominal variety of the animal species, eating and sleeping his way through life, oblivious of all obstacles.
Waterbury's ancestry was open to doubt. It was very vague; as vague as his features. It could not be said that he was brought up by his hair because he hadn't any to speak of. But the golden flood of money he commanded could not wash out certain gutter marks in his speech, person, and manner. That such an inmate should eat above the salt in Colonel Desha's home was a painful acknowledgment of the weight of necessity.
What the necessity was, Sue sensed but vaguely. It was there, nevertheless, almost amounting to an obsession. For when the Desha and Waterbury type commingle there is but the one interpretation. Need of money or clemency in the one case; need of social introduction or elevation through kinship in the other.
The latter was Waterbury's case. But he also loved Sue—in his own way. He had met her first at the Carter Handicap, and, as he confided to himself: “She was a spanking filly, of good stock, and with good straight legs.”
His sincere desire to “butt into the Desha family” he kept for the moment to himself. But as a preliminary maneuver he had intimated that a visit to the Desha home would not come in amiss. And the old colonel, for reasons he knew and Waterbury knew, thought it would be wisest to accede.
Perhaps now the colonel was considering those reasons. His room was next that of his daughter, and in her listening wakefulness she had heard him turn restlessly in bed. Insomnia loves company as does misery. Presently the colonel arose, and the strong smell of Virginia tobacco and the monotonous pad, pad of list slippers made themselves apparent.
Sue threw on a dressing-gown and entered her father's room. He was in a light green bathrobe, his white hair tousled like sea-foam as he passed and repassed his gaunt fingers through it.