By Christmas, however, he realized that the question of meeting their
expenses necessitated further economies, and reluctantly at last they
decided to let Mike go. Dick went out to the stable with a distinct
sinking of the heart, while David sat in the house, unhappily waiting
for the thing to be done. But Mike refused to be discharged.
"And is it discharging me you are?" he asked, putting down one of
David's boots in his angry astonishment. "Well, then, I'm telling you
you're not."
"We can't pay you any longer, Mike. And now that the car's gone--"
"I'm not thinking about pay. I'm not going, and that's flat. Who'd be
after doing his boots and all?"
David called him in that night and dismissed him again, this time very
firmly. Mike said nothing and went out, but the next morning he was
scrubbing the sidewalk as usual, and after that they gave it up.
Now and then Dick and Elizabeth met on the street, and she bowed to him
and went on. At those times it seemed incredible that once he had held
her in his arms, and that she had looked up at him with loving, faithful
eyes. He suffered so from those occasional meetings that he took to
watching for her, so as to avoid her. Sometimes he wished she would
marry Wallace quickly, so he would be obliged to accept what now he knew
he had not accepted at all.
He had occasional spells of violent anger at her, and of resentment, but
they died when he checked up, one after the other, the inevitable series
of events that had led to the catastrophe. But it was all nonsense
to say that love never died. She had loved him, and there was never
anything so dead as that love of hers.
He had been saved one thing, however; he had never seen her with Wallie
Sayre. Then, one day in the country while he trudged afoot to make one
of his rare professional visits, they went past together in Wallie's
bright roadster. The sheer shock of it sent him against a fence, staring
after them with an anger that shook him.
Late in November Elizabeth went away for a visit, and it gave him
a breathing spell. But the strain was telling on him, and Bassett,
stopping on his way to dinner at the Wheelers', told him so bluntly.
"You look pretty rotten," he said. "It's no time to go to pieces now,
when you've put up your fight and won it."
"I'm all right. I haven't been sleeping. That's all."