"And--by George!--I almost forgot! Here"--and he laid a check
across the note in Selwyn's hand--"here's the balance of what you've
advanced me. Thank God, I've made it good, every cent. But the debt is
only the deeper. . . . Good-bye, Philip."
Selwyn held the boy's hand a moment. Once or twice Gerald thought he
meant to speak, and waited, but when he became aware of the check thrust
back at him he forced it on Selwyn again, laughing:
"No! no! If I did not stand clear and free in my shoes do you think I'd
dare do what I'm doing? Do you suppose I'd ask a girl to face with me a
world in which I owed a penny? Do you suppose I'm afraid of that
world?--or of a soul in it? Do you suppose I can't take a living out of
it?"
Suddenly Selwyn crushed the boy's hand.
"Then take it!--and her, too!" he said between his teeth; and turned on
his heel, resting his arms on the mantel and his head face downward
between them.
So Gerald went away in the pride and excitement of buoyant youth to take
love as he found it and where he found it--though he had found it only
as the green bud of promise which unfolds, not to the lover, but to
love.
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