“I will not follow him. Probably I shall never see him again.”
“It may be a bit hard for you to understand, for you do not know the French nature, perhaps. But since little Rosemarie went away for ever he has loved you. You made something more of him than the old rack-tender when you took him into partnership. When you made him your friend before all the big men at the City Hall something bloomed in him, m'sieu'--something that before had been only a withered bud! Ah, you think I am fanciful? Very well! I cannot think how to say it any other way. You are a token for him from little Rosemarie who has gone away; you are friend, you are son, you are in his eyes destined savior of these poor people.”
“I am glad I am going away. I would hate to betray such childlike faith. Good-by, Miss Zelie!”
He heard her call to him when he was in the street. He turned and halted and saw her slim, white figure at the gate, and he stepped back half-way.
She was girlish sympathy incarnate, and his troubled, hungry, self-accusatory soul caught the radiation of that womanly solace.
“It's not what you say to me you are,” she said, her breath coming fast, her tones low. “It's what I know you are! That you will be when at last you shall come to yourself. I do not care what you say. I shall not remember! To the world--to me--to poor Etienne, just now, you lied about yourself, M'sieu' Farr--about your real self. But you did not lie to a little girl when she asked you to show your true self to her. Of yourself--with little Rosemarie--that shall I remember!”
“Some day some woman will love you,” she continued. “And when you are sure that she does love you, then you will tell her your troubles and she will know what to say to make things right for you. For that is the mission of good women. They understand how to listen and how to help the men they love. You shall see!” She hurried into the house.
Farr was promptly admitted when he presented himself at the door of Archer Converse's residence, and he was conducted to that gentleman's library, and came face to face with his patron, whom he found sitting very erect in a high-backed chair.
“I have been waiting for you, sir,” said Converse.
“I expected that you would be waiting, sir.”
