“I imagine,” answered Radlett slowly, “that you might change that ‘what’ to whom.”
“You would have me believe that knowing you, she prefers some one else?” asked Loring incredulously. “Why, Baird, it is impossible.”
“By no means. I think I know the man.”
Loring’s blood boiled. “Who is the brute?” he cried out. “Tell me and I will kill him, break his neck, shoot him.”
Baird smiled wryly, blew a cloud of smoke toward the roof, and observed: “If I were you, Stephen, I would do nothing rash. But come, we have talked long enough of me and my affairs. Let us talk now about you and yours! Suppose, for instance, you tell me why you turned the color of a meerschaum pipe when Miss Cameron appeared in the doorway to-night.”
Loring started and looked quickly at Radlett. “You noticed that, did you? Well, you have quick eye and a gift for drawing conclusions, but they may not always be right.”
“Not always, no; but this time they are, aren’t they? Be honest, Stephen, are you or are you not in love with Jean Cameron?”
“Excuse me, but that can not interest you to know.”
“Perhaps not, and perhaps it is a damned impertinence to inquire, but after all an old friendship gives some privileges.”
“Of course it does!” exclaimed Stephen, tilting down his chair. He walked across the room to Radlett’s seat and stood behind him. “See here, Baird. I did not want to speak of this thing because I was afraid of breaking down and making an ass of myself generally. You don’t know what it is to be placed as I am. When you asked a girl to marry you, you had something to offer her, whether she had the sense to take it or not. You offered her a clean life, a fortune honorably made, an untarnished name, while I,—why even if there were the remotest chance that Miss Cameron would look at me, I should be a brute to ask her. The more I cared for her, the less I could do it. So you see, for me it must be ‘the desire of the moth for the star.’ A man must abide by the consequences of his acts; he must take his medicine, and if mine is bitter, it may do me all the more good only—only I cannot talk about it. Good night!”