A Court of Inquiry Part 23

"So you will seal the compact? Think it over carefully. I can never give you the strong arm a well man could."

"If you will teach me to acquire the sort of strength you have learned yourself," she said--and there was a hint of mistiness about those eyes of hers--"you will have given me something worth while."

Presently they were talking of her journey, to be begun on the morrow; of her work, in which she had come in the last year to remarkable success; of his work--the part which he could do and would continue to do, he said, with added vigour. They talked quietly but earnestly, and each time she looked up into his face she saw there a new brightness, something beyond the mere patient acceptance of his hard trial.

"Jerry," she said all at once, breaking off in the midst of a discussion of certain phases of the ill.u.s.trator's art, "you don't know how suddenly rich I feel. All the while you were doing such wonderful, beautiful things with your pen in New York and being made so much of, I was thinking, 'What an inspiration Jerrold Fullerton would be as a real friend.' But all the girls were----"

He laughed. "They won't trouble you, now."

"But your friendship is worth more now than then."

He shook his head.

"It is--because _you_ are more than you were then."

"I'm a mere wreck of what I was, Nan." He did not say it bitterly, but he could not quite keep the sadness out of the uncompromising phrase.

She looked up at him, studying his face intently. It had always been a remarkably fine face, and on it the suffering of the past year had done a certain work which added to its beauty. He did not look ill, but the refinement which illness sometimes lends to faces of a somewhat too strongly cut type had softened it into an exceeding charm. Out of it the eyes shone with an undaunted spirit which told of hidden fires.

"I am glad a share in the wreckage falls to me," she said softly.

"Nan," he told her, while his lips broke irresistibly into a smile again, "I believe you are deliberately trying to burn a sweet incense before me to-night. Just how fragrant it is to a fellow in my shape I can't tell you. You would never do it if I were on my feet, I appreciate that; but I'm very grateful just the same."

"I'd like," she said with eyes which fell now to the hands folded in her lap--and the droop of her head as he saw it, with the turned-away profile cut like an exquisite silhouette against the fire, was burnt into his memory afterward--"to have you remember this Christmas Eve--as I shall."

"Remember it!"

"Shall you?"

"Shall I!"

"Ah--who is deliberately trying to say nice things now?" But she said it rather faintly.

He lay back among his pillows with a long breath. "So you go to-morrow morning?"

"Early--at six o'clock. You will not see me. And I must go now. See, it is after eleven. Think of their making me go out this evening when I must be up at five and travel the next forty-eight hours. On Christmas Day, too. Isn't that too bad? But that's the price of my staying over to spend Christmas Eve with Jerry Fullerton--like the foolish girl that I am."

She rose and stood before him.

"Would you mind slipping off that--domino?" he requested. "I'd like to see you just as all the other fellows would have seen you if you had gone to the Van Antwerps'."

Smiling, and flushing a little, she drew off the silken garment, and the firelight bathed her softly rounded shoulders and arms in a rosy glow.

He looked at her silently for a minute, until she said again that she must go, and took a step toward him, smiling down at him and holding out both hands.

"I don't know how I can spare my friend, when I've just found her," he said, searching her face with an intentness she found it difficult to bear. "I suppose I ought not to ask it, but--it's Christmas Eve, you know--and--you'll give me one more thing to remember--won't you, Nan?"

She bent, like a warm-hearted child, and laid her lips lightly upon his forehead, but he caught her hands.

"Is that the proper degree for friendship--and you feel that more would be too much?"

She hesitated; then, as his grasp drew her, she stooped lower, blushing beautifully, to give the kiss upon his lips. But it was not the breath of a caress she would have made it. Invalids are sometimes possessed of unsuspected reserves of strength.

She turned away then in a pretty confusion, said, "Good-night," and went slowly toward the door.

"Oh, come back!" he cried. "Tell me--you will write often?"

"Oh, yes; every--month."

"Month? Won't you write every mail?"

"Oh, Jerry!"

"Every week, then?"

"Will you?"

"I will, whether you do or not."

"Your ideas of friendship----"

"Are they too exacting?"

"No-o," she admitted, as if reluctantly. She was behind him now, her hands clasped together tightly, her eyes glowing with the light of a frightened purpose which was over-mastering her. He tried to turn and see her, but she defeated this.

"Please come here," he begged.

She was silent, trying to breathe more naturally.

"Please----"

"What good will it do?" she asked at last. "I shall have to go, and you--won't----"

"Won't--what?"

She crept up close behind his chair.

"--_say it_," she whispered.

He reached out his hand with a commanding gesture. "Nan, come here.

Say--what?"

She bent over the back of his chair and laid a soft, trembling hand on each side of his face.

"Please say it," she breathed.

He seized her hands and drew them to his lips. "Nan, you are tempting me almost beyond my power. Do you mean to tempt me? Are you trying to?"

She leaned low, so that her breath swept his cheek, and whispered, "Yes."