of it;
all that I recollect is that it turned upon the well-worn theme of
loyalty in love.

Barrett seldom talked of himself or his past, even to me; and I was
closer to him, I think, than anyone else in the West. But the play
seemed to have touched some hidden spring. Almost before I knew it he
was telling me of his college days, and of his assured future at that
time as the only son of a well-to-do New England manufacturer.

"Those were the days when I didn't have a care in the world," he said.
"My father was the typical American business man, intent upon piling up
a fortune for my mother and sister and me. I couldn't see that he was
wearing himself out in the effort to get ahead, and at the same time to
give us all the luxuries as we went along; none of us could see it.
His notion was to put me through the university, give me a year or so
abroad, and then to take me into the business with him. . . . Don't
let me bore you."

"You are not boring me," I said.

"Then there was the girl: that had been arranged for both of us, too,
though we were carefully kept from suspecting it. I can't tell you
what she was to me, Jimmie, but in a worldful of women she was the only
one. She was in college, too, but we had our vacations together--at a
little place on the Maine coast where her people and mine had cottages
less than a stone's throw apart."

Barrett's cigar had gone out, but he seemed not to know it. His eyes
were half-closed, and for the moment his strong clean-cut young face
looked almost haggard. I let him take his own time. In such
confidences it is only the sympathetic ear that is welcome; speech in
any sort can scarcely be less than impertinent.

"I shall never forget our last summer together," he went on, after a
bit. "It seemed as if everything conspired to make it memorable. We
were both fond of canoeing and sailing and swimming; she could do all
three better than most men. Then there were the moonlit nights on the
beach when we sat together on the white sands and planned for the
future, the future of clear skies, of ambitions working out their
fulfilment in the passing years, the blessed after-while in which there
were to be an ideal home and little children, and always and evermore
the love that makes all things beautiful, all things possible.

"We planned it all out in those August days and moonlit nights. I had
one more year in the university, and after that we were to be married
and go t