“I don’t know what to do,” the other said. “When I first met her I wanted to cut college and get out in the world and go to work like a man. I told her so. But she wanted me to stay in college, and as it was the first thing she’d ever wanted of me, I did it. I’d do anything she asked me. I’ve quit drinking. I’m going at everything as hard as it’s in me to go; but—I don’t know—I feel—I feel as if it isn’t me—it’s just because she wants me to, and, do you know, old man, it frightens me to think how—if she—if she went out of my—my life—” He stopped and his broken phrases were not continued to any ending. Another long silence ensued. It was finally terminated by the brother’s saying: “You must confess, old man, that you aren’t fixed so as to be able to say one really serious word to any woman—unless it is, ‘Wait.’” “I know that,” Jack answered; “but I suppose—” “She’d be taking so many chances,” the friend interrupted. “A man in college is never the real thing. You’d better give it up.” Then the other whirled about and faced him. “Give it up, did you say?” he asked almost angrily. “Yes, that’s what.” For a minute they looked at one another. Then: “I shall never give it up,” the lover said very slowly and steadily—“never, until she gives me up.” Burnett sucked in his breath with a sudden compression of his lips. “All right,” he said, not unkindly; “but I don’t believe you’ll ever get her, and that’s flat. There are too many being entered for that race, and long before you and I get out of here she’ll be Mrs. Somebody Else.” Jack stared at him as if he hardly heard, and then suddenly he stepped nearer and spoke. “Did she ask you to have this talk with me?” “No,” said the brother in surprise, “she never says anything about you to me.” A look of relief fled across his friend’s face, and then a look of resolution succeeded it. “I’m not going to be discouraged,” he said; “not for a while, at any rate.” “You’d better be.” Jack laughed. The laugh sounded a trifle hollow, but still it was a laugh, and that in itself was a triumph of which none but himself might ever measure the extent. Because in that moment he decided to lay the whole case before her the next time that he went to town, and the coming to a resolution was a relief from the uncertainty that clouded his days and nights—even if a further black curtain of darkest doubt hung before the possibilities of what her answer might be. Chapter Nine The Downfall of Hope It was on a Saturday about the middle of May that Jack came to town, his mind well braced with love and arguments, and his main thoughts being that when he returned something would be settled. It was a beautiful day, warm and sunny, and at five in the afternoon both of the drawing-room windows of Mrs. Rosscott’s house were wide open, and the lace curtains were taking the breeze like little sails.