Page:While Caroline Was Growing.djvu/217

 it would be our wives that would suffer...."

"I guess that's about it," Luella answered, seriously.

"Then all I have to say is, we're damned cowards, all of us!" he cried, with the old flash of rage.

But it was the last time. Beaten, yet triumphant, he stooped for his harness and himself assumed it, with set teeth.

"I—I shouldn't have said that," he said, gravely. "It's—it's a very difficult thing ... a man has so many responsibilities...."

They waited patiently.

"It seems one must compromise—something—anyway," he went on, thinking his way painfully along. "I don't know why it seems so difficult to me now; ... they talked enough, all the others, and of course I shall never speak to your Aunt Ethel again—you may use your own judgment, Dorothy—because there are some insults...."

He shook himself again and drew the girl to her feet.

"Dearest," he said, and there was a sad little