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Page 79
"Well, when you leave here go at once to my bank--it's on Thirty-fourth
Street--and I'll telephone the cashier. So you'll not have any difficulty.
Will you leave New York at once?"
"I surely will. It's an awful place. Two years ago when I came here with my
company I thought it was grand. But I guess I lost something over there.
. . . I want to be where it's quiet. Where I won't see many people."
"I think I understand," returned Carley. "Then I suppose you're in a hurry
to get home? Of course you have a girl you're just dying to see?"
"No, I'm sorry to say I haven't," he replied, simply. "I was glad I didn't
have to leave a sweetheart behind, when I went to France. But it wouldn't
be so bad to have one to go back to now."
"Don't you worry!" exclaimed Carley. "You can take your choice presently.
You have the open sesame to every real American girl's heart."
"And what is that?" he asked, with a blush.
"Your service to your country," she said, gravely.
"Well," he said, with a singular bluntness, "considering I didn't get any
medals or bonuses, I'd like to draw a nice girl."
"You will," replied Carley, and made haste to change the subject. "By the
way, did you meet Glenn Kilbourne in France?"
"Not that I remember," rejoined Burton, as he got up, rising rather stiffly
by aid of his cane. "I must go, Miss Burch. Really I can't thank you
enough. And I'll never forget it."
"Will you write me how you are getting along?" asked Carley, offering her
hand.
"Yes."
Carley moved with him out into the hall and to the door. There was a
question she wanted to ask, but found it strangely difficult of utterance.
At the door Burton fixed a rather penetrating gaze upon her.
"You didn't ask me about Rust," he said.
"No, I--I didn't think of him--until now, in fact," Carley lied.
"Of course then you couldn't have heard about him. I was wondering."
"I have heard nothing."
"It was Rust who told me to come to you," said Burton. "We were talking one
day, and he--well, he thought you were true blue. He said he knew you'd
trust me and lend me money. I couldn't have asked you but for him."
"True blue! He believed that. I'm glad. . . . Has he spoken of me to you
since I was last at the hospital?"
"Hardly," replied Burton, with the straight, strange glance on her again.
Carley met this glance and suddenly a coldness seemed to envelop her. It
did not seem to come from within though her heart stopped beating. Burton
had not changed--the warmth, the gratitude still lingered about him. But
the light of his eyes! Carley had seen it in Glenn's, in Rust's--a strange,
questioning, far-off light, infinitely aloof and unutterably sad. Then
there came a lift of her heart that released a pang. She whispered with
dread, with a tremor, with an instinct of calamity.
"How about--Rust?"
"He's dead."
The winter came, with its bleak sea winds and cold rains and blizzards of
snow. Carley did not go South. She read and brooded, and gradually avoided
all save those true friends who tolerated her.
She went to the theater a good deal, showing preference for the drama of
strife, and she did not go anywhere for amusement. Distraction and
amusement seemed to be dead issues for her. But she could become absorbed
in any argument on the good or evil of the present day. Socialism reached
into her mind, to be rejected. She had never understood it clearly, but it
seemed to her a state of mind where dissatisfied men and women wanted to
share what harder working or more gifted people possessed. There were a few
who had too much of the world's goods and many who had too little. A
readjustment of such inequality and injustice must come, but Carley did not
see the remedy in Socialism.
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