"No," the other answered, firmly. "We'd be acting a lie if we teach others that poverty and humility are a blessing while having a nest-egg of our own."
"Now hear from me." Dora tried to speak with amusing lightness. "While you were here, Harold, exploding your bomb, I've been telling your mother. She is down in her room, crying her heart out. She takes it very hard. It has been the pride of her life that you are a minister, but she never dreamed that she'd miss hearing you preach every Sunday of her life, and help you with your work besides. That's the mother of it, and this is really the hardest blow she's ever had."
There was a sound of a dog barking down-stairs. It was John's pet fox-terrier, Binks.
"He is after a rat," Dora said, forcing a smile to her set face and somehow not wanting to meet the eyes of the stricken man.
"Yes"—John rose—"it is time for me to take him out. He stays in too much." John knew that he was expected to say more on the other subject, but all at once his tongue had become tied. An indescribable despair incased him like walls of sinister darkness. The young couple seemed to feel his mood and to be baffled by it, standing in the presence of his disappointment as if conscious of actual guilt in causing it. Neither said anything, and John got his hat and descended to his dog.
They heard him whistling to Binks as if nothing unusual had happened. They heard the yelping animal scampering up the basement steps to meet him. Creeping wordless, and hand in hand, to the stairs, they saw John bend down and take the dog in his arms. Binks was licking the side of his face, and John seemed unconscious of it. The mute watchers heard the front door close after him. Dora turned back into John's room. She was wiping her eyes. Harold took her into his arms.
"Don't, don't, dear!" he said, tenderly. "It can't be helped, you know. He will suffer—another will suffer, but it has to be. We all bear a cross of some sort or other."
"I know it," she continued to sob, "but it is terrible. Harold, I have never seen such a look on his face as was on it when I came in the room just now. He looked as if he had lost every hope in life. I didn't think I'd ever wound him like this. I used to tell him that he and I would be near together always—if he married or if I married. You see, I know he counted on it, for he mentioned it frequently. Wasn't that pitiful—taking Binks up that way? I could almost hear him sob."
"You are too sentimental, dear," Harold answered, trying to disguise his own emotion, which perhaps Dora's melting mood had elicited. "You soft-hearted women are always attributing your own feelings to men. He'll soon get over it. Besides, a man as young as he is ought not to become a confirmed old bachelor, and this very separation may drive him into a happiness as normal as yours and mine is going to be."
"I hope so—oh, I hope so!" Dora whimpered, still wiping her eyes. "If he should remain unhappy here I am afraid I'd not be wholly content away from him."