“How did you think I cared?” he asked, passionately; “in a grandfatherly way like Roger?”
“I do not know,” she answered sadly; “you were so good to me, and I liked you. I didn’t think.”
“Will you think now?” he asked, gently. “Will you think and tell me?”
“As soon as you know yourself. I will wait years and years.”
“Yes, I will tell you as soon as I know myself,” she promised.
“Then I will wait. You are worth waiting for.”
“No. Do not tell anybody. It is my secret. You haven’t any secret. Nobody need ever know, I will never be pitied.”
“I am not bound in any way. I haven’t promised, John.”
“No; you haven’t,” he said, touched by the sorrow in her face. “I am sorry to trouble you so; but I had to say it. I came to Bensalem to say it.”
“No; I had to have it out. Perhaps it will make a man of me. Something will have to. A man needs some kind of a fight.”
Judith thought that it was not only his “fight.”
“I am going home; I can’t stay here. I’ll tell Roger I decided not to stay over Sunday. I don’t care what he thinks. We talked till twelve o’clock last night. I know what he thinks. I’ll walk to Dunellen to the train, I’d like to start and walk around the world.”
“John.” Judith’s eyes were filled with tears.
“Don’t feel like that,” he answered, roughly; “it’s bad enough for me to feel for myself without feeling for you. I have always thought you cared.”
He walked off, not turning for her low word of farewell.
“If we are ever in doubt what to do, it is a good rule to ask ourselves what we shall wish on the morrow we had done.”
The first day of September, late in the afternoon, Judith stood over the kitchen stove making beef-tea for Aunt Rody. The weekly letters from Don had failed—failed for three weeks; but twice before in five years had she missed a letter. At the step behind her she did not raise her eyes; the beef-tea was ready to strain; at this moment she had no interest in the world but that beef-tea.
“Judith, are you ready for news?” asked Roger.
“Good news?” she asked, forgetting her beef-tea and turning towards him, radiant.
“I’ll take it in the way to _make_ it good, then. I’m not ready for anything unpleasant,” she said, with a vain attempt to keep her lips from quivering.
“Then I’ll tell you. Guess who is married. But you will never guess,” he replied with confident eagerness.