The Seventh Noon Part 30

Her own face had in the meanwhile grown brighter.

"It is all from within," he answered, "all from within. And--now presto!--it is gone."

Truly the problem did seem to vanish as he allowed himself to become conscious of the picture she made there in the suns.h.i.+ne. With her hair down her back she could have worn short dresses and pa.s.sed for sixteen.

The smooth white forehead, the exquisite velvet skin with the first bloom still upon it, the fragile pink ears were all of unfolding womanhood.

"Since my mother died," he said, "you are the first woman who has ever made me serious."

"Have you been such a recluse then?"

"Not from principle. I have been a sort of office hermit by necessity."

"You should not have allowed an office to imprison you," she scolded.

"You should have gone out more."

"I have--lately."

"And has it not done you good?" she challenged, not realizing his narrow application of the statement.

"A world of good."

"It brightens one up."

"Wonderfully."

"If we stay too much by ourselves we get selfish, don't we?"

"Intensely. And narrow-minded, and morbid, and petty and--," the words came charged with bitterness, "and intensely foolish."

"I 'm glad you crawled out before you became all those things."

"You gave me a hand or I should n't."

"I gave you a hand?"

"Yea," he answered, soberly.

"Perhaps--perhaps this is another of the things that could n't have happened to either of us alone."

"I think you are right," he answered.

He did not dare to look at her.

"Perhaps that is true of all the good things in the world," she hazarded.

"Perhaps."

Once again the golden mist--once again the aching yearning.

The telephone jangled harshly. It was a warning from the world beyond the hedge, the world they had forgotten.

The sound of it was to him like the savage clang of barbaric war-gongs.

With her permission he answered it himself. It was a message from his man at the Waldorf.

"He's making an awful fuss, sir. He says as how he wants to go home.

I can hold him all right, only I thought I 'd let you know."

"Thanks, I 'll be right down."

"I 'd better go back to your brother," he said to her as he hung up the receiver. "I want to have a talk with him before bringing him home."

Her eyes grew moist.

"How am I ever going to repay you for all you 've done?"

"You 've repaid me already," he answered briefly and left at once.

CHAPTER XVIII

_The Making of a Man_

Donaldson with hands in his pockets stood in front of Arsdale, who had slumped down into a big leather chair, and admired his work. There was much still to be done, but, comparing the man before him with the thing he had brought in here some thirty hours before, the improvement was most satisfactory. Arsdale, with trimmed hair and clean, shaven face, in a new outfit from shoes to collar, and sane even if depressed, began to look a good deal of a man.

"How do you feel now?" inquired Donaldson.

Arsdale hitched forward and resting his chin in his hands, elbows on knees, stared at the floor.

"Like h.e.l.l," he answered.

Donaldson frowned.

"You deserve to, but you oughtn't," he said.

"Oh, I deserve it all right. I deserve it--and more!"

"Yes, you do. But that does n't help any."

Arsdale groaned.

"There is n't any help. I 've made a beastly mess out of my life, out of myself."

"I wish I could disagree, but I can't," answered Donaldson.

He walked up and down a moment before the fellow studying him. He was worried and perplexed. The task before him was an unpleasant one. He had to overcome a natural repugnance to interference in the life of another. Under ordinary circ.u.mstances he would have watched Arsdale go to his doom with a feeling of nothing but indifference. In his own pa.s.sion for individual liberty he neither demanded nor accepted sympathy for personal misfortunes or mistakes, and in turn was loath to trespa.s.s either upon the rights or duties of another, but his own life, through the medium of the boy's sister, was so inextricably entangled with this other that now he recognized the inevitability of such interference. On his success or failure to arouse Arsdale largely depended the happiness of the girl.