Marjorie! So far as my uncertain mind could do so I pledged to her a purity of intercourse such as a man might give to his affianced sweetheart.
I had folded the letter up and put it in my pocket when a visitor was announced, no less a person than Tom Barton. He came toward me with a distressed look on his honest countenance and it was plain that he was far from being at ease.
"Don," he said, paying no attention to my motion toward a chair, "what is the trouble between you and Statia? I can't believe you have done anything intentionally to set her so against you, and yet--"
"Sit down and don't get excited," I responded quickly, deciding to dispose of the matter in the calmest way. "Have you had your coffee? If not, let me ring for another pot. You don't seem well this morning, old boy."
"I'm not well," he said, in a dispirited tone, taking the chair at last. "But you can make me so with one word. Last night Statia came to me with her eyes full of tears. 'Tom,' she said, 'if you love me I want you to promise never to see Donald Camran again.' 'Never to see Don!' I exclaimed, unable to believe my ears. 'Yes,' said she, 'I've told him I don't wish him to call here and I want you to write him to the same effect.' You may imagine what a staggerer that was. There's not another fellow in the world of whom I wouldn't rather she'd have said that. I tried to get her to give some reason--any reason, or the hint of one--but it was no use. She only cried the harder, and when at last I went to bed, I tell you I didn't get much sleep. Tell me, Don, what it means."
"It seems you didn't make your sister the promise," I replied. "And you were quite right. The whim of a girl should not come between stanch friends like us."
That did not satisfy him, however. He murmured that we had been good friends--that he couldn't bear to think we should ever be otherwise--but he wanted to understand what his sister meant. As she wouldn't tell him, he had come to ask that favor of me.
"Supposing I don't care to say anything about it," I replied, quietly. "If Statia is set on keeping the wonderful secret, how can you expect me to divulge it?"
He struggled a moment with this idea, for Tom was always slow in grasping abstruse problems.