Guy Wetmore Carryl

“ He is begging — begging at our very doors — a man whom we have called by the name of friend! I can’t help him. All I can do, as I said before, is to turn to you, whom I love better than all the world, and ask you to save him, in my stead. ”

“ There was a reason, you know, — a little reason, but the most important in the world! I was jealous, Natalie, insanely jealous. I could forgive him everything now.”
“That hurts me, John. I’m so happy, boy dear, that I want everybody else to be happy as well. Oh, why is it that a girl must always have that one thought on her mind, which is so hard, so hard? ”

“ He could not, in the thraldom of his present Elysium, be expected to remember, even if he had ever fully realized, that he himself was tall, broad-shouldered, clean-cut, and clean-lived, with the unmistakable stamp of the American gentleman on his linen and his simple, well-fitting clothes, and the evidences of a sane, regular existence in his steady hands and his clear eyes and his firm mouth, — a man of whom any woman might be, and of whom this particular woman was, extravagantly proud. ”

“ He doesn’t have to remember how the life died suddenly out of a voice that had been tender and eloquent. He doesn’t sicken with the thought that his hand has given a blow so merciless, so unmerited, and yet so inevitable. ”

“ He hasn’t on his conscience the memory of hearts cruelly wounded, — wounded even to death. He doesn’t in memory see the eagerness in a good friend’s eyes die to disillusion, to hopelessness, to bitter, bitter sorrow. ”

“ Anything else is impossible: that I see and accept. But the hideous fact remains. A man who loved me once, who offered me all that a man can offer a woman, is walking the streets of Kenton City, cold, hungry, homeless — a beggar! ”

“ Oh, there ought to be some way! The man ought not to ask unless he is sure of the reply! It’s too much responsibility to force upon the girl!
“So with Spencer Cavendish,” she went on after a moment. “In spite of all — in spite of all, John! — I can’t forget that he loved me. I think a woman never forgets that.”
“Until the man marries another woman!”
“Ah,” said Natalie, with a faint smile, “then least of all, John! And besides, Spencer never married. ”

“ It is bad enough to be hemmed in by the wretched conventionalities which prevent my doing openly what I conceive to be my duty, without adding to the restrictions that actually exist the imaginary one that I must not even think of the misery, the wretchedness, the sordid vice which abound just across the borders of the comfortable little world in which I live. ”

“ His happiness, when it comes to him, isn’t clouded by the thought of those to whom it means the loss of their last remnant of hope. They are there, the disappointed ones, but he doesn’t know, he doesn’t know! ”

“ Worst of all, for the girl, is the after-discovery that her decision has made a difference — a hideous, irreparable difference, — that the man can never be the same again, that she has wrecked a life with a word! ”

“ I suppose that’s the penalty attached to being engaged to the second biggest man in the state. I’m sometimes jealous, Johnny boy, of Alleghenia’s place in your affections.”
“You’re the only person in the world who has no need to be,” laughed Barclay. “What is the news?”
“Probably,” said Natalie, “the only interesting items are that you are cold and a little cross, and that you want a big chair and a cup of tea and some hot toast.” ”

“ I mean the thought of the good men, the true, brave, loyal men, whom she has cared for, who have been her best friends perhaps, and yet whom she has been forced to hurt bitterly because they asked her for something she was not able to give. A man has so much easier a road! ”

“ A chap like that, with no family hanging about his neck, and with his brains, and only his own living to make, could forge ahead almost anywhere.”
“But John, I’m sure I saw him to-day, and suppose I should tell you that he was — begging?”
Barclay almost smiled at her earnest, troubled face, as he replaced his cup on the table.
“Begging?” he answered. “I’m afraid I couldn’t bring myself to believe you, violet-eyes. Even granting that he has fallen as low as that, which I should think one of the most unlikely things in the world, it would hardly be in Kenton City, would it? ”