“You thought you had?”
“I thought I had, yes. But the girl went off and married somebody else. I just learned it—to-night!”
“She couldn’t have loved you very much to do that, Nathan.”
“I suppose not! No!”
“I’m—I’m—awful sorry, Nathan! Sorry for you! If there was anything I could do, you know I’d do it, don’t you?”
He raised his face again. His hands wandered around the desk top, as though groping blindly.
Fog! Fog! Or perhaps he was searching for something.
“Milly, I feel like the loneliest chap on God’s earth!” Two huge tears brimmed in his hot, hard eyes, blurred his sight, zigzagged down his haggard, unshaven cheeks. He arose, walked to the window. The girl’s eyes were riveted on him. When he came close to her, she only tilted her head back to look up into his face.
“Nathan,” she lisped, “is there anything I could do to make you—happy?”
It was her soft, ample bosom which he saw heaving that brought that constricted feeling across his own chest and words to his lips.