Page:The Better Sort (New York, Charles Scribners Sons, 1903).djvu/400

THE BETTER SORT too full. It was on the one hand a grim vision for his own case, but was on the other a kind of clearance of the field. With Beadel out of the way his own case could live, and he was obviously thinking what it might be to be as dead as that and yet as much alive. What his demand first did, at any rate, was to make Howard Bight look straight at Maud. Her own look met him, but she asked nothing now. She felt him somehow fathomless, and his practice with their infatuated guest created a new suspense. He might indeed have been looking at her to learn how to reply, but even were this the case she had still nothing to answer. So in a moment he had spoken without her. "I've quite given him up."

It sank into Marshal, after which it produced something. "He ought then to come back. I mean," he explained, "to see for himself—to have the impression."

"Of the noise he has made? Yes"—Bight weighed it—"that would be the ideal."

"And it would, if one must call it 'noise,'" Marshal limpidly pursued, "make—a—more."

"Oh, but if you can't!"

"Can't, you mean, through having already made so much, add to the quantity?"

"Can't"—Bight was a wee bit sharp—"come back, confound it, at all. Can't return from the dead!"

Poor Marshal had to take it. "No—not if you are dead."

"Well, that's what we're talking about."

Maud, at this, for pity, held out a perch. "Mr. Marshal, I think, is talking a little on the basis of the possibility of your not being!" He threw her an instant glance of gratitude, and it gave her a push. "So long as you're not quite too utterly, you can come back."

"Oh," said Bight, "in time for the fuss?" 388