But Travers had waited too long and too yearningly for this hour to be lightly deterred from stating his whole case. So he proceeded eagerly: “You heard last night of Fair’s phenomenal success? Well, he told me after you had gone that it had also made me rich. Some time ago he bought my poor father’s library from me—more to assist me than from any need of those particular books—and I left the money with him for investment. He now tells me that he bought Empire Mines shares with it and that my profits amount to fifty thousand pounds sterling. Of course I thought that this was merely a bit of his wonderful generosity and altogether an afterthought—the result of that erratic and impulsive unselfishness which puzzles all who know him—but he assures me that he can prove from his broker’s books that he bought stock for my account at the time that he purchased his own, before it was at all certain that it would turn out such a staggering success. At all events, there the money is to my credit at Burton’s bank.” “Oh, I am so glad, dear fellow!” cried Mrs. March. “What a king he is!” “Isn’t he? A knight, a brother—one in a million!” “Well, Dick,” went on Mrs. March after her first flush of pleasure and surprise, “I can’t tell you how I rejoice with you in this great good fortune; but truly, dearest friend, our love can never be more than that of two tried old friends who have known each other always. So be good.” “Only one thing can ever make me believe that love like mine will be denied,” replied Travers with great intensity; “I shall press my sacred claim, Dorothy, until you tell me that there is another whom you love.” Mrs. March waited in evident distress for a few moments, and then, speaking very low and painfully: “Poor old Dick, it hurts me terribly to wound you—but, Dick, there is another. I am not free.” “Good God!” leaped from the man’s lips as he started forward with the iron entering his soul. “Mrs. March—with all my heart I beg you to forget me and my mad words of this day. I—I—I— Good-bye!” “God bless you!” she murmured, crushed by his suffering. “And, Dick, of course I have told you this in confidence.” “Certainly,” he answered, raising his hat and moving toward the house. At the window of the library he stopped, and then came slowly back to where she stood thinking. “Tell me one thing more. Dorothy, it is not this clown Allyne, is it?” Mrs. March thanked him with her eyes for this bit of humor, which she knew must have cost him much, and exclaimed, with an effort to meet his own pleasantry: “Heavens! No!” “Thank goodness for that,” replied Travers, with a sickly smile. “I could not have borne that,” and he rushed off into the house to face final failure on the one only day when success seemed to have dawned dimly with more of promise than had ever shone in the east of his hope. CHAPTER IX