"The devil!" Dick stared. "I thought you were out of the game."
"I didn't suppose you would be interested."
"Then I bet you're the one that's blocking me there." Dick shook his head reproachfully. "Davy, I'm disappointed in you. I call it playing it low down on me. You might at least have told me, so I could know what to meet. It isn't fair. It isn't friendly. And after all I've done for you! I didn't think you could do it." Dick sighed sorrowfully, his faith in human nature evidently shattered.
"I'm sorry, Dick," said David. "I supposed you put all your faith in your wires."
"Well, I'll tell you what we'll do," he offered at last. "When friends find themselves competing, they should meet half-way. We'll pool on your plans--I'll take a chance on them, sight unseen. I'll throw my pull over to you. Then we'll split the spoils, two and one. The two to me, of course."
"The prestige of my name," said Dick with dignity, "is worth something, I think. We'll have to get busy at once, because the committee meets this afternoon."
"I'm afraid, Dick, I'll have to say no. You had a chance at my plans before I thought of putting them in. You could have had them for almost nothing, but you didn't think them worth looking over. I think I'll stand or fall with them."
"Yes, Dick, final. But it doesn't mean I'm not grateful--"
With a gesture Dick waived that. "Very well," he said sadly, rising. "I thought there was such a thing as friendship in business. I see I was mistaken."
David wondered if Dick were losing his punch.
He tore the yellow paper slowly to bits. "Poor Shirley!" he muttered.
Poor Shirley, with her house of toys! Frightened now, no doubt, into thinking that she wanted what she did not really want, as he had been driven, by resentment at her blindness, into saying what he did not really mean. She at least would never miss what he could no longer give. She would be content with the hollow pretense their life together would be, missing only her good times. But he must have her beside him, to remind him that he was not free and never should be free to go browsing in the green fields of love.
She would never know. Still, poor Shirley--none the less!
The afternoon came to an end somehow. The clamor of machinery from the shop was stilled. The other offices became silent. He supposed the others had gone. A janitor made the rounds, closing the windows. Doggedly David stuck to his table until he had completed the design he was working on. Then he put the table in order for the night, donned his hat and coat and started to leave.