Derwent cut the matter short at last. “I must spare you any more to-day, Miss Livingstone. Forgive me, Miss Holyoke. I will call for your answer in a week, Miss Livingstone--surely, you will grant me that delay?” And he strode out of the room, hat and cane in hand, valiantly, and yet his eyes did not meet Gracie’s; a month’s delay, he was sure, would save her cousin from Townley; and he had sacrificed himself to gain this month’s delay. For now he might never tell his love for Gracie. As he entered the hall the servant opened the front door and let Charlie Townley in. Derwent nodded slightly. “H’ are you,” said the other, as they passed. CHAPTER XXX. ARTHUR IS MADE HAPPY. John Haviland, too, was working very hard that fall. He was not perhaps so happy even as Charles Townley, if this is any reason for hard work. And have I not said that we all work in New York? We work to drive away that bugbear of young Americans--discontent; much as Flossie Gower and her set work to drive away that other bugbear of Americans who have, surely, no cause for discontent--ennui. But it was for neither of these two great things that John had ever worked; nor did he now work quite as usual. He strode down and up his town, breasting the December snows, and would have said that he was just as usual; and have half believed it, but for that strange choking that took him, by times, deep down in the throat. And yet, through his moist eyes, the earth looked fairer, and his life a deeper thing. How dare I speak of John’s life, day by day? How he goes to his office, and reads his review, and writes his speech, and looks to his other labors, and walks home alone and late? Such humdrum coloring, and so same throughout; it would be a deadly thing to read about; and as for living--is it their horror of such a life as his that set Kill Van Kull and Townley to life’s pleasures and Flossie Gower and Caryl Wemyss to seek life’s vanities? Surely; and the reader too has justified them; for is he--or she, more likely--not tired already of all this moralizing? But she must suffer me one moment more. For to John himself, his life had never been either sad or dull; nor was he sad now, despite his heart was wrung. The word _sadness_ would not well suit the Sidneys and the Falklands, nor even such of us who know that life is a thing that we must either throw away or sacrifice, not cherish and enjoy; for “he who loves life overmuch shall die the dog’s death, utterly.” Is it sad, when some fair corner-stone is mortised to the temple? A Sidney’s life is always used. Yet had John one deeper sorrow, admitted hardly to himself. And this I hardly dare to say, lest it be scouted. For this thing was nothing other than an absence of belief in God. Not disbelief, but nonbelief; and it was a cause not of sadness, but of sorrow; quite a different thing, believe me; for the latter thing is manly.