Easton hung down his head. “I have nothing to say in my defense.”
“Oh!” groaned Gilbert. “I beg your pardon; I do indeed, Easton. I didn’t mean to say that.”
“It makes very little difference whether you say or think your contempt of me,” rejoined Easton, gloomily. “It can’t be greater than the contempt I feel for myself.”
He looked so piteously abased, so hopelessly humiliated, that Gilbert came and laid his arm across his shoulder—the nearest that an American can come to embracing his friend. “Look here, let’s stop this thing right here, or it will get the upper hand of us in another minute. Come, now, I won’t make another apology if you won’t! Is it quits?”
Easton caught Gilbert’s humor, and laughed the ghost of his odd, reluctant laugh. “It’s safest,” he said; “it seems to be the only way to keep from coming to blows. Besides, it’s superfluous on your part.”
“Oh, I can’t allow that,” retorted Gilbert, “if I may say so without offense,” he added, with mock anxiety.
“Gilbert,” Easton began, after a little silence, “I suppose you must know what I would like to tell you?”
Gilbert, who had resumed his former place, glanced at his friend from the corner of his eye. “Yes, I think I can guess it.”
“Well?”
“Why, my dear fellow, it’s so very completely and rightly your own affair, that I can have nothing to say if you tell it. A man doesn’t ask his friend for advice in such matters; he asks him for sympathy, for congratulation.”