Page:Melville Davisson Post--The Man of Last Resort.djvu/70



OU see,” the Governor was saying,” the failure of this bank in San Francisco has wiped out every penny I had in the world. On the fourth day of next March I will be poorer than the ordinary drayman. So poor that I must begin all over again, and I have no heart to do it.”

Miss Marion Lanmar was silent. Her bands rested upon the great aims of the chair in which she was seated. Her face might have been a cast; it was so very motionless.

“I should not mind if it were not for you,” the young man went on. “I mean,”—he hesitated for a moment,—“if I had never seen you; if I had never known you. But now the effort would seem so miserably inadequate, if it were not made for you. I have loved you and lived for you too long. I have grown accustomed to you as the mighty incentive. Every 46