"No; I wouldn't want to do that, even if I could."
He paused for a moment, and played with a tassel which fell across his lap from the cushion she had placed in the chair.
"Of course," he said without looking up, "much of it will always seem like a delirious dream, but after all it is the past which has given me the present. And except for the past I should not have Huntington."
There was a wealth of feeling in his words which showed Mrs. Thatcher how strong a hold his friend had gained upon him.
"Does he know how much he means to you, I wonder?"
Hamlen looked up quickly. "He hasn't the slightest conception," he answered. "I have never seen a man so oblivious to the power he exercises over others, or to the results which he obtains. He really thinks I've come through this crisis because of some latent strength of character, when in reality it has been the reflection of his own. He would tell you that when I was dying of shame and mortification I took myself by the boot-straps and pulled myself out of the abyss, and he would never believe it was the result of the philosophy he demonstrated by every word and act. He positively made me ashamed to do anything but respond. And now that I am out, he has fired me with a desire to use the years which remain in doing something for some one else. Can you wonder that I love him?"
Marian's face reflected the pleasure his words gave her. "This is the real Philip Hamlen I have seen behind his mask," she exclaimed; "this is the Philip I tried in my mistaken way to rescue from the chaos of confused ideals. I failed but Mr. Huntington succeeded; my gratitude to him passes all bounds."
"You must take some of the credit whether you wish to or not," Hamlen insisted. "When you invaded my Garden of Eden last winter and made those disturbing statements, you weakened the barrier of false beliefs with which I had surrounded myself. You could have restored the structure had I permitted it, but I wasn't ready for it then. You were entirely right when you said that I had forgotten the teachings of the masters I venerated, that I was blind to the difference between the means and the end. But, Marian—" for the first time his voice quavered—"that was before I had a friend! Think of living all those years without a friend! It was through your invasion that my horrible tranquillity was disturbed; it was through you that I met the one man in all the world who could take advantage of that condition to build a human structure upon such ruins."
"Give me all the credit you can, Philip. I need it to help me to forget."
"Tut! tut!" he chided her. "I may touch upon the past, but to you it is forbidden! Through you"—he went on—"I gained my friend, and, as if to demonstrate the philosophy he lives, in giving him to me you gained him too; for to your daughter is assured the most wonderful of companionships. Now, by the same token, in giving him to her, I shall expect the reward of being admitted to full friendship in this family whose members mean the world to me."