Page:Dangerous Business (1927).pdf/45

 "You wrote me this after you—you must have written this after"

Jay had to say it. "Yes, father."

So he was stripped of any defense of himself.

"Very well, Miss Powell," his father said to her, dismissing her to her little office beyond the coat closet.

Ellen closed the first door and the second. Shut away from their voices—Mr. Rountree's only it was, soon—she sat at her little desk, stifled. He had done what the telegram implied! He had said so. Yet he was the same.

When she had faced him, and heard him say so, he had been the same as before to her. He was in trouble, in far, far, deeper trouble than ever but he had not changed, to her. She had not shrunk from him or wanted to shrink from him. She had not reproached him or wanted to. She had wanted to help him, to defend him as never before. He was hers, hers to help and defend, whatever he had done. She did not, she could not care; she loved him never, never so much as at this moment.

Suppose he had done wrong, terribly wrong, unforgivably wrong with Lida-Haige! She forgave him! Whatever it was she ought to feel against him, she felt for him. She yearned to be with him. He did not love Lida Haige. This was not as he would have come if he loved her. He had done wrong with Lida Haige; that was all.

All? It was a great deal; oh, it was a very great deal! But it was not all. To love was all.

That letter which he had written upon his birthday and