“If you feel that way about it, my friend—” he said, and leaned forward and added something, his hand outstretched.
The man nodded, shook the hand, and went to his ticket rack. The Inger wrote out a message to his father, instructing him to pay to the agent a sum which he named; and to his bank he scribbled and posted a brief note. Then as the train pulled in, he turned back to where Lory waited.
“It’s all right,” he told her. “Everything’s all right,” he added jubilantly. “Come on!”
Beside the train she would have taken his hand, but he followed her. “I’m coming in,” he said brusquely, and in the coach sat down beside her in her seat.
Then she turned to him, and in her voice were the tremor and the breathlessness which had been there for an instant when, in the morning, she had tried to say her thanks:
“I wish’t I could thank you,” she said. “I wish’t I could!”
He met her eyes, and he longed inexpressibly for a way of speech which should say the thing that he meant to try to say.
“You know, don’t you,” he asked awkwardly, “that I’d do anything to make up—”