Page:The Soft Side (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1900).djvu/297

Rh naming the young man was only a question of time, for at the end of a month she told me he had been twice to her mother's and that she had seen him on each of these occasions.

'Well then?'

'Well then, he's very happy.'

'And still taken up'

'As much as ever, yes, with those people. He didn't tell me so, but I could see it.'

I could too, and her own view of it. 'What, in that case, did he tell you?'

'Nothing—but I think there's something he wants to. Only not what you think, she added.

I wondered then if it were what I had had from him the last time. 'Well, what prevents him?' I asked.

'From bringing it out? I don't know.'

It was in the tone of this that she struck, to my ear, the first note of an acceptance so deep and a patience so strange that they gave me, at the end, even more food for wonderment than the rest of the business. 'If he can't speak, why does he come?'

She almost smiled. 'Well, I think I shall know.'

I looked at her; I remember that I kissed her. 'You're admirable; but it's very ugly.'

'Ah,' she replied, 'he only wants to be kind!'

'To them? Then he should let others alone. But what I call ugly is his being content to be so "beholden"'

'To Mr. and Mrs. Dedrick?' She considered as if there might be many sides to it. 'But mayn't he do them some good?'

The idea failed to appeal to me. 'What good can Marmaduke do? There's one thing,' I went on, 'in case he should want you to know them. Will you promise me to refuse?'

She only looked helpless and blank. 'Making their acquaintance?'

'Seeing them, going near them—ever, ever.'