"Then you have loved her all these weeks?"
"Since first I saw her."
"My friend!" Hamlen raised himself unsteadily in his weakness, refusing assistance, until he stood upon his feet. Then supporting himself with one hand, he raised the other to his forehead in salute.
"You, sir, are a great man!" he said with dramatic fervor. "You not only possess ideals, but actually live up to them! A world that can produce one such as you is entitled to my respect, and is a place worth living in!"
"Cease!" Huntington cried, genuinely embarrassed by Hamlen's tribute. "Leave me out of this, for this is your day. To rise superior to the habit of twenty years, to let the world knock you down time after time, and finally come up smiling with an acknowledgment that it was your fault after all, to stand ready to pool issues with that world which you have always considered your enemy, is an exhibition of character which puts you so far beyond the rest of us that you couldn't see us if we saluted you.—I thought my happiest moment came when I discovered unexpectedly that Merry loved me; now you have taken me to heights beyond.
"I believe you," Hamlen answered him, his voice weak from the strain of the interview, but his eyes bright with excitement and his face radiant,—"I believe every word you say. For one of your great brotherhood to find himself at last means more to you than any personal happiness,—such is the strength of the fetish! I wonder if the girl is big enough to share you with your other idol!"
"Have no fears," Huntington laughed contentedly. "She will worship at the shrine with devotion equal to my own, and my fellow-worshipers shall bow the knee to her."
The nurse gave Huntington a reproving glance when she came for her patient, but Hamlen would not permit even a suggestion that his friend had been unmindful of his weakness.
"It's all right," he reassured her. "I know I'm excited, I know that I've pulled too hard on my strength, but something has come to me—inside here—which no doctor could ever give me. You'll see. Take me away now and I'll be as docile as a child.—But, Huntington, please telephone Marian that instead of coming to see me, I'd rather go to her. I would prefer to tell her what I have to say down there where the trees are cousins to my trees, and the language of the flowers can fill in the words when I find my own speech inadequate.—She'll understand."