“I guessed. Besides—the handkerchief. It is not your own. Yours are a little more businesslike.”
“Oh, well!” said Kent a little huskily, and throwing his head back with a gesture of impatience, “I can't hide it. What would be the good? I have found out that she is a friend no longer, that what you were saying the other night is true—and I feel a brute! My God, what a brute I feel!”
Wither's mental balance was for a moment upset. He righted it after a moment with considerations of his friend's character. In many fragile, nervous bodies there is a delicacy of perception which often remains all the keener when protected by a shell of cynicism.
“You want to be reasoned with gently, friend John,” he said. “You must not feel a brute when you love a woman as a man like you can love. It's the best and holiest thing on God's earth, believe me.”
“But, Teddy, she is so frank, so trustful, so proud of our friendship—it can never be the same again—if I should tell her, she would hate me——”
“You can bet your life she wouldn't!” murmured Wither.
“She would go out of my life in indignation, and she would be right,” Kent went on. “She would scorn me for the feelings that I know now I have had all along for 'her. No; it is all over, all over. I can't meet her again. I think I shall go mad! I shall throw up everything and go away.”
“You dear, foolish old chap,” said Wither, “can't you see that very little would make her in love with you, if she is not so already? Why should you two not get married?”
“I marry!” gasped Kent, as if struck by a new idea. “I ask Clytie Davenant, with her beauty and intellect and genius, to come and share—this! Clytie Davenant marry me! Why, the idea is ludicrous—preposterous!”
“If I were she, I should not think so,” said Wither affectionately.