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Bernald sat silent, divided between the fierce satisfaction of seeing the Interpreter rush upon his fate, and the despair of knowing that the state of mind he represented was indestructible. Then both emotions were swept away on a wave of pure joy, as he reflected that now, at last, Howland Wade had given him back John Pellerin.
The latter moral revolution seemed to have been accepted as submissively as a change in hair-dressing; and it even struck Bernald that, in the case of many of the assembled ladies, their convictions were rather newer than their clothes.
"And you expect Wade ?" "Why, I gathered from our good Doctor that it's his trade. Doesn't he explain interpret?" "In his own domain which is Pellerinism." Winterman gazed out musingly upon the moon-touched dusk of waters. "And what is Pellerinism?" he asked. Bernald sprang to his feet with a cry. "Ah, I don't know but you're Pellerin!"
He hadn't said so simply because Winterman was better than Pellerin that there was so much more of him, so to speak. Yes; but it came to Bernald in a flash wouldn't there by this time have been any amount more of Pellerin? ... The young man felt actually dizzy with the thought. That was it there was the solution of the haunting problem! This man was Pellerin, and more than Pellerin!
Bernald sat opposite, his elbows propped on the table, his eyes fixed on the swaying waters outside, from which the moon gradually faded, leaving them to make a denser blackness in the night.
Bernald felt that his extreme docility in such matters was proportioned to the force of resistance which, for nearly half a life-time, had kept him, with his back to the wall, fighting alone against the powers of darkness. In such a scale of values how little the small daily alternatives must weigh!
"The last thing?" She poised her fork above the peach on her plate. "I don't think he said anything. Oh, yes when I reminded him that he'd solemnly promised to come back with me and have a little talk he said he couldn't because he was going home." "Well, then, I suppose," said Bernald, "he went home." She glanced at him as if suspecting a trap. "Dear me, how flat!
I drove at it hard all last week, thinking our friend's brother would be down on Sunday, and might look it over." Bernald had to repress the tendency to another wild laugh. "Howland you meant to show Howland what you've done?" Winterman, looming against the moonlight, slowly turned a dusky shaggy head toward him. "Isn't it a good thing to do?"
You know what strange hours she keeps. She told me she was going to give him a Welsh rabbit, and explain Pellerinism to him." "Oh, if she's going to explain " Bernald murmured. But his amazement at the news struggled with a confused impatience to reach his rooms in time to be there for his friend's arrival.
Perhaps because they were the first conventional words that Bernald had heard him speak, the young man was struck by the relief his intonation gave them. "She wanted to send a carriage," Winterman added, "but I told her we'd walk back through the woods." He looked at Bernald with a sudden kindness that flushed the young man with pleasure. "Are you strong enough? It's not too far?" "Oh, no.
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