David was satisfied. The great love of his life had been given to Dick,

and now Dick was his again. He grieved for Lucy, but he knew that the

parting was not for long, and that from whatever high place she looked

down she would know that. He was satisfied. He looked on his work and

found it good. There was no trace of weakness nor of vacillation in the

man who sat across from him at the table, or slammed in and out of the

house after his old fashion.

But he was not content. At first it was enough to have Dick there, to

stop in the doorway of his room and see him within, occupied with the

prosaic business of getting into his clothes or out of them, now

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and then to put a hand on his shoulder, to hear him fussing in the

laboratory again, and to be called to examine divers and sundry smears

to which Dick attached impressive importance and more impressive names.

But behind Dick's surface cheerfulness he knew that he was eating his

heart out.

And there was nothing to be done. Nothing. Secretly David watched the

papers for the announcement of Elizabeth's engagement, and each day drew

a breath of relief when it did not come. And he had done another thing

secretly, too; he did not tell Dick when her ring came back. Annie had

brought the box, without a letter, and the incredible cruelty of the

thing made David furious. He stamped into his office and locked it in a

drawer, with the definite intention of saving Dick that one additional

pang at a time when he already had enough to hear.

For things were going very badly. The fight was on.

It was a battle without action. Each side was dug in and entrenched, and

waiting. It was an engagement where the principals met occasionally the

neutral ground of the streets, bowed to each other and passed on.

The town was sorry for David and still fond of him, but it resented his

stiff-necked attitude. It said, in effect, that when he ceased to make

Dick's enemies his it was willing to be friends. But it said also, to

each other and behind its hands, that Dick's absence was discreditable

or it would be explained, and that he had behaved abominably to

Elizabeth. It would be hanged if it would be friends with him.

It looked away, but it watched. Dick knew that when he passed by on the

streets it peered at him from behind its curtains, and whispered behind

his back. Now and then he saw, on his evening walks, that line of cars

drawn up before houses he had known and frequented which indicated a

party, but he was never asked. He never told David.




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