tually he, gaunt and
white and serious-looking, standing beside my bed and gazing down at me
with timid eyes. We were both so glad to see each other we were a
little afraid. The shadow of things that had happened was over us
still and made us grave.

I must have looked very thin, for he took my hand as if he thought it
would break and his voice was hardly above a whisper. He said whatever
good came of him and whatever happiness he had hereafter he would owe
to me, and that would be more than owing me his life; but father was
right in saying that a man with the reputation he held in this city had
no right to see or speak with me. He had only come to thank me and to
say good-by. He was going away to South America.

"But father does not know you," I said, "and I am sure you are quite a
different man from what any one here thinks you. And if you go away it
will break my heart."

At that he looked happier and said if I felt that way he would go just
the same, but it would make him want to come back again. And then,
perhaps, he might be more the sort of man my father would give his
daughter to. A friend of his father's, he said, had offered him an
overseer's place in his mine in South America; and would I forget all
about him in two years, he wanted to know?

"Two years will seem a very long time," I said, "but I shall remember
you and wait for you for ever."

He smiled and said, "Those two years will be almost for ever to me, but
I have bought my chance dear, and even the hope of such happiness is
more than I deserve."

And then I called father and told him. He was very grave, and said to
Johnny, "It depends on you; if you can show yourself a different sort
of man and wipe out the record you have made for yourself, well, then,
I suppose she will be of age, and it will be your own affair--but I
hope she will forget you." That was absurd!

So I kissed Johnny good-by--though father didn't like that at all--for
it would help to make the two years shorter.

THE END

End of Project Gutenberg's The Other Side of the Door, by Lucia Chamberlain

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