“Your note? No.”
“I sent it by mail. I wanted you to know that your friends are proud of you. We know why you resigned. It is easy to read between the lines.”
“Thank you,” he said simply. “I knew you would know.”
“Even the Sun recognizes that it was because you are too good a man for the place.”
“Praise from the Sun has rarely shone my way,” he said, with a touch of irony, for that paper was controlled by the Ridgway interest. “In its approval I am happy.”
Her impulsive sympathy for this man whom she so greatly liked would not accept the rebuff imposed by this reticence. She stripped the gauntlet from her hand and offered it in congratulation.
He took it in his, a slight flush in his face.
“I have done nothing worthy of praise. One cannot ask less of a man than that he remain independent and honest. I couldn’t do that and stay with the Consolidated, or, so it seemed to me. So I resigned. That is all there is to it.”
“It is enough. I don’t know another man would have done it, would have had the courage to do it after his feet were set so securely in the way of success. The trouble with Americans is that they want too much success. They want it at too big a price.”
“I’m not likely ever to have too much of it,” he laughed sardonically.