s well aware that, all things considered, an old-year
call was a more fitting visitation than a new-year one for Opdyke. At
least one knew the worst of the old year, and some comfort could be
taken out of that. Indeed, next morning, Olive Keltridge wished that
she had followed out the rector's plan. However, Opdyke's courage was
better than her own. When she stood up to go away, he wished her a
happy New Year with a nonchalance apparently quite genuine and free
from envy. Nevertheless, something in his accent brought the stinging
tears to Olive's eyes. Another year, such as the past eight months--

"Ditto to you, Reed!" she answered gayly. "I do hope it will find you
back in the field again."

He nodded. Then,--

"But think how lonesome you would be," he reminded her.

And Olive went her way, thinking. Indeed, she thought so earnestly
about the fact that it was some time before she noticed that the
phrase, still ringing in her ears, was in the optative, not in the
simple future which she herself would have used in that connection. Was
her father keeping things back from her, by way of helping her to
maintain her poise? Did Reed himself know things of which she was in
ignorance? Foolish, especially when they were friends and nothing more!
It was a friend's place to know the worst of things, and help him bear
them. The questions, though, stayed with her for many days. They had
been, indeed, at the back of her abstraction, when Dolph Dennison had
greeted her, that January morning.

Mingled with them, too, had been some other questions, questions akin
to those lashing Scott Brenton's brain. However, in the case of Olive,
they were incidental. With Brenton, they shook the foundations of his
whole professional career.

Indeed, it seemed to Brenton, looking down upon the still, straight
figure of his friend, that it was little short of the incredible that
Reed Opdyke, the hilarious, the irresponsible, could be the present
cause and focus of a storm which was bidding fair to make a shipwreck
of his life. If only Brenton had been aware how, long ago, Opdyke had
been detailed to show him life as it was, and to teach him what an ass
he easily might become, there would have been a certain fitness, to his
mind, in the later situation. Once more Opdyke had been detailed to
show him life as it really was, life and some other things, to point
out to him, not what an ass he might, but what a hypocrite he had,
become.

Nowadays,