“... I just wanted to hear you. I’m shot to pieces, Duke; I’ll get a few drinks and wait for you. Then, you’ll see, I’m all out of range of the man you are——”
There was no answer. Morning looked up to find the long bronzed face laughing, the eye gleaming. Fallows turned to the doorman and another, saying:
“Both of you go with him. He needs a drink or two, and one of you come back to show me the way to him—when I’m through here.... This is a great night for us, John.”
The three went down in the elevator.... And so the sick man had not come back—the dithyrambic Duke Fallows was gone for good. The sick man was strong; the impassioned phrase-maker had risen to the simple testimony of service. From scorn and emotion, from judgment and selection, he had risen to the plane of loving kindness.... The air in the street refreshed him a little. Morning found a bar.
“I’ve been drinking,” he said to the men. “Fallows is a king. I was there with him at Liaoyang.... Maybe you saw my story in the World-News.... He stayed in the grain with Luban. I went on to see the cavalry fight.... I came back home to do the story. He went on to Russia on the Ploughman story——”
“Is he a preacher?” said one of the men.
“Yes—but he learned about war and women first.”
“I’ll take a soft drink and go back. You stay here, and I’ll bring him to you,” the same one went on.
The other drank with Morning and agreed that they would not leave until Fallows came.
“And so he learned about war and women first,” he said queerly, when they were alone. “But he has been a laboring man——”