The brief November day was ending; it was dusk when they reached the house, and perhaps none of the three were ungrateful for the shadows which veiled them from one another. On the veranda, Corrie detained his sister, allowing Mr. Rose to enter alone.
"I'm not coming in just yet, Other Fellow," he said. "Ask father to excuse me from dinner; I have an errand that cannot wait. I don't want you to worry about me or to be unhappy. I did a lot of thinking yesterday, out in the speed-boat by myself; I know what I am going to do and that I will put up the best fight I can. Go help father; don't fret over me."
He kissed her soft mouth with the man's firmness so different from his former casual caresses, and went down the broad steps, walking across the lawns in the direction from which they had just come.
Dinner at the Rose house took place about two hours after the corresponding meal occurred at the farmhouse near the Westbury Turn. So while Corrie was walking through his five miles of desolate, dark road, the evening became well under way in the country parlor; sick-room no longer.
There had been changes in the room since Gerard's occupancy of it. Bright rugs and coverings mitigated the severity of the horse-hair furniture, a couple of easy-chairs stood there like velvet-clad cavaliers in a Puritan meeting. If the hues ran to vivid scarlets and unexpected contrasts, why, Rupert had done the shopping and had consulted his own taste. In the midst of his artistic work, that one-time mechanician and self-installed nurse of Gerard's was now seated beside a red-shaded lamp, engaged in reading aloud to his companion from a classic found on the family book-shelf.
"'Thaddeus, his eyes cast down, glided from the room in a gentle suffusion of tears,'" he concluded a paragraph, and broke off, stunned. "Gee! And I was understanding that was a man! I ain't qualified for the judges' stand, but--did you ever strike this joy-promoting endurance run of language before?"
"Once. I didn't have you to read it to me, or I would have enjoyed it more," Gerard returned, stirring in his arm-chair opposite the ruddily glowing German stove. "Don't you want to give me a cigarette; I haven't had one since noon."