Part 27 (1/2)
”Just tell me _once_--” he began
”Don't,” she said, ”please. Now you confess.”
”Well, Barbs,” he said, ”this week-end is a sort of good-by. I'm in very deep, and I'm going to a new place to live a new life.”
”Well!” she exclaimed, ”you're not running away?”
”Only from temptation,” he said. ”I have spoken to all my creditors but one, and they have behaved decently and kindly. Wherever I go I take my obligations with me, and, G.o.d willing, they shall all be paid.”
”Oh,” she said, ”I think a man ought to make good in the midst of his temptations.”
”Might just as well say that you ought to finish your bust of Blizzard with one hand tied behind your back, since it's a constant temptation to you to use both. You ought also to be blindfolded and to work in the dark, since you are constantly tempted to look at your model and see what you are doing.”
”I shall miss you,” she said simply, ”like everything. Why--”
”Why what?”
”It fills the future with blanks that can't be filled in.”
”That may or may not be, Barbs. If they can't be filled in, you will write to me, and I will come back.”
”But I don't mean--”
”I don't believe you know what you mean. But you aren't Barbs now; you are my confessor. I confess to you, then, that I am in pretty much the same boat with Harry West. I am going away, partly, to get over you--if I can. Love is a fire. Feed it, and it grows. Let it alone, and it dies.
Confessor, there is a certain girl--one Barbara Ferris, I love her with all my heart and soul and have so done for many years. Since this leads to happiness for neither of us, I am going to cut her out of my life.”
”Wilmot! Are you speaking seriously? You're not going to write to me?
I'll have no news of you? Not know how you are getting on? Not know if you are sick or well?”
”The first night,” said Wilmot, ”you cried. The second you slept and thought about work.”
”But you are my oldest friend and my best. Whatever we are to each other, we are that--best friends. We have our roots so deep in the happenings of years and years that we can't be moved--and get away with it.”
”We shall see,” said Wilmot almost solemnly. ”It isn't going to be easy for me, either. But time will soon show. If after a year we find that we cannot do without each other's friends.h.i.+p--why, then we must see each other again. That's all there is to it.”
”At least you'll write?”
He shook his head.
”But I will.”
”No, Barbs. The sight of your writing would be too much fuel for the fire.”
She was silent for a quarter of a mile. She did not enjoy the idea of being deliberately cut out of Wilmot Allen's life and heart ”Suppose,”
she said, ”that at the end of the year the fire is still burning bright?”
He slowed the car down so that he could turn and look at her. His face looked very strong and stern. ”In that case,” he said, ”I will come back and marry you,”