AN EXPLANATION

The following week Monte devoted himself wholly to the entertainment of Marjory and her friends. He placed his car at their disposal, and planned for them daily trips with the thoroughness of a courier, though he generally found some excuse for not going himself. His object was simple: to keep Marjory's days so filled that she would have no time left in which to worry. He wanted to help her, as far as possible, to forget the preceding week, which had so disturbed her. To this end nothing could be better for her than Peter and Beatrice Noyes, who were so simply and honestly plain, everyday Americans. They were just the wholesome, good-natured companions she needed to offset the morbid frame of mind into which he had driven her. Especially Peter. He was good for her and she was good for him.

The more he talked with Peter Noyes the better he liked him. At the end of the day--after seeing them started in the morning, Monte used to go out and walk his legs off till dinner-time--he enjoyed dropping into a chair by the side of Peter. It was wonderful how already Peter had picked up. He had gained not only in weight and color, but a marked mental change was noticeable. He always came back from his ride in high spirits. So completely did he ignore his blindness that Monte, talking with him in the dark, found himself forgetting it--awakening to the fact each time with a shock when it was necessary to offer an a.s.sisting arm.

It was the man's enthusiasm Monte admired. He seemed to be always alert--always keen. Yet, as near as he could find out, his life had been anything but adventuresome or varied. After leaving the law school he had settled down in a New York office and just plugged along.

He confessed that this was the first vacation he had taken since he began practice.

"You can hardly call this a vacation!" exclaimed Monte.

"Man dear," answered Peter earnestly, "you don't know what these days mean to me."

"You sure are ent.i.tled to all the fun you can get out of them,"

returned Monte. "But I hate to think how I'd feel under the same circ.u.mstances."

"I don't believe there is much difference between men," answered Peter.

"I imagine that about certain things we all feel a good deal alike."

"I wonder," mused Monte. "I can't imagine myself, for instance, living twelve months in the year in New York and being enthusiastic about it."

"What do you do when you're there?" inquired Peter.

"Not much of anything," admitted Monte.

"Then you're no more in New York when you're there than in Jericho,"

answered Peter. "You 've got to get into the game really to live in New York. You 've got to work and be one of the million others before you can get the feel of the city. Best of all, a man ought to marry there. You're married, are n't you, Covington?"

"Eh?"

"Did n't Beatrice tell me you registered here with your wife?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Did n't Beatrice tell me you registered here with your wife?"]

Monte moistened his lips.

"Yes--she was here for a day. She--she was called away."

"That's too bad. I hope we'll have an opportunity to meet her before we leave."

"Thanks."

"She ought to help you understand New York."

"Perhaps she would. We've never been there together."

"Been married long?"

"No."

"So you have n't any children."

"Hardly."

"Then," said Peter, "you have your whole life ahead of you. You have n't begun to live anywhere yet."

"And you?"

"It's the same with me," confessed Peter, with a quick breath.

"Only--well, I haven't been able to make even the beginning you 've made."

Monte leaned forward with quickened interest.

"That's the thing you wanted so hard?" he asked.

"Yes."

"To marry and have children?"

Monte was silent a moment, and then he added:--

"I know a man who did that."

"A man who does n't is n't a man, is he?"

"I--I don't know," confessed Monte. "I 've visited this friend once or twice. Did you ever see a kiddy with the croup?"

"No," admitted Peter.

"You're darned lucky. It's just as though--as though some one had the little devil by the throat, trying to strangle him."

"There are things you can do."

"Things you can try to do. But mostly you stand around with your hands tied, waiting to see what's going to happen."

"Well?" queried Peter, evidently puzzled.

"That's only one of a thousand things that can happen to 'em. There are worse things. They are happening every day."

"Well?"

"When I think of Chic and his children I think of him pacing the hall with his forehead all sweaty with the ache inside of him. Nothing pleasant about that, is there?"

Peter did not answer for a moment, and then what he said seemed rather pointless.

"What of it?" he asked.

"Only this," answered Monte uneasily. "When you speak of a wife and children you have to remember those facts. You have to consider that you 're going to be torn all to shoe-strings every so often. Maybe you open the gates of heaven, but you throw open the gates of h.e.l.l too.

There's no more jogging along in between on the good old earth."