“I don’t want to pass for more than I am worth. If I have fallen short of what you expected of me, I don’t blame you for putting me down on the common level with everybody.” If her sorrow had been his own he could not have felt it more deeply. “Only I am disappointed, that’s all.” She was distressed to the soul; his sympathy for her had been so courageously beautiful, so exquisitely true, that she could not bear the idea of disappointing him, or allowing him to feel that she underrated his value. “I don’t know men very well, but I know you are not like the others. Nothing could be very hard to bear, because you are my friend. I welcome the days which bring you to me. You have been my fortification.” “Then prove it,” the soft answer came back. “I know that something distresses you. Tell me of it, and let me help you.” “It’s nothing that you could change.” “How do you know? Let me judge that.” “No, not now, sometime I will tell you if you can soften things for me.” Her keen refinement would not let her talk to him of her poverty. CHAPTER IX. RICHMOND BRIARLEY had never asked any questions about Esther Powel; she was Glenn’s friend, and that was all. “I saw Miss Powel,” he said, as he and Glenn sat over their lunch. “I nearly got past before I recognized her. She has changed. She has been ill?” “No, I think not,” Glenn answered. “She’s been working hard, and she hasn’t been used to work. I am going away on my vacation to-morrow. I’ve been wondering if there wasn’t some nice place, just outside of town, where she might go. She needs the rest, the change.” Glenn Andrews made no secret of his kindly interest. He and Richmond Briarley had long been closely intimate. “What’s the matter with my yacht? The old thing might sink if it knew there was a woman aboard, but let it sink. It would give you a chance to show your heroism.” “Would you come along?” “Oh, no; I might not get ashore. Really I have other plans, but it is easy enough to get a crowd. There’s Mrs. Low and Kent.” “Both on the other side, won’t be back before winter.” Andrews looked worried as he spoke. “Damn it, I couldn’t do it anyhow; I’ve promised to go to the Adirondacks.” Briarley glanced at him. “Another woman?” “Several, Jack and his wife will be along.” Even in the intimacy of their friendship Richmond Briarley had never asked that much before. Glenn Andrews alone knew how hard was the sense of finding himself bound through overwhelming conviction of duty. “I was out to dinner with Jack last night. You couldn’t look at him and doubt such a thing as love, yet Marie was always a little tyrant. It made me wonder, after all, what kind of a wife made a man happiest.” “I can tell you, a dead one.” “Honestly I believe he would have gone stark mad if he hadn’t won her. He worships her.” “He’d have come out without a scratch. My observation is that a man can get over not getting a girl easier than he can get over getting her.”