Part 47

"You are getting worse," he declared abruptly. "There is no use of trying to spare my feelings, Gerard; instead of gaining, you are losing strength."

"I beg your pardon; I am getting better," Gerard corrected with perfect assurance. He put aside his glass and leaned back in his chair. "You do not in the least know what you are talking about. Since you are here, we might get a bit of business done that I had meant to leave until you came in to luncheon. You understand that the formalities must be preserved; are you willing to sign one of our regular driver's contracts, to drive for the Mercury Company this year, and for no one else?"

"I will do," said Corrie, "whatever you want. Is this the paper?"

He took up a pen and, still standing, wrote his name across the foot of the document, the other man's attentive gaze following his movements.

"Is that the way you sign legal papers, Corrie, without reading them?"

The blue eyes gave the questioner one expressive glance.

"You gave it to me," was the answer.

Gerard contemplated him, then drew another printed sheet from a pile on the desk and pushed it across.

"All right. I want you to sign this, too," he signified.

As carelessly as before, Corrie set down his signature and turned away from the half-folded page.

"I came back early because I had a letter from Flavia," he explained. "I wanted to answer it right away. She says that father doesn't intend to come home until autumn. I don't believe she likes it much, but of course she wouldn't tell him so. He has enough to stand."

Gerard drew the two papers towards him and put them into a drawer. It is hard to be consistent; the temptation of seeing Corrie read Flavia's weekly letters had long since vanquished the resolution of the man whose love for her seemed to himself to illustrate that the economies of Nature do not include human passion. Corrie found a willing, if mute, listener to all confidences in regard to his sister.

"She has never told Mr. Rose that you are with me?" Gerard asked, to-day.

"No," he responded, surprised. "Oh no! She promised me that, the night before I left home."

"Yet, living so close in thought with your father as she does, I should have fancied----"

"That she couldn't help telling him? I don't know who started that story that women can't keep secrets." Corrie laughed mirthlessly. "From what I have seen, they can keep quiet a secret that would tear itself out of any man I ever met, if the wrench killed him."

He unclasped the heavy fur coat he still wore and pushed it aside from his throat with an impatient air of oppression.

"But Flavia could not hurt anyone, and she knows that would hurt me," he added, more gently.

Flavia could not hurt anyone. Allan Gerard considered that statement, not so much in bitterness as in a wonder that made all life uncertain. He recalled the fountain arcade of rose-colored columns and delicate lights, the sweetly demure girl who waited there for her brother, and her last brief glance of virginal candor and innocently unconscious confession. Flavia could not hurt anyone. Yet she had dismissed the man who loved her, without even granting him the poor alms of courteous sympathy, had left him to learn her decision from her silence. Long since, he had decided that he had been condemned as the cause of her beloved brother's downfall, and now he again excused her hardness to himself as a result of her over-tenderness for Corrie. Either that, or he himself had somehow failed, in some way had been found lacking.

He never did Flavia Rose so much wrong as to suppose her affected by the physical injury he had suffered. If she had loved him, no such change could have come between them. He knew that no marring of her beauty would have had effect upon his steadfast love for her, and he rated her far above himself in all good things.

It was quite a quarter-hour before Gerard looked up and saw that Corrie had remained standing by the table in an abstraction complete as his own, lips pressed shut and straight brows contracted. Startled out of self-contemplation, the older man leaned forward to give his aid to a moment whose bitterness he divined.

"Corrie, take off your furs and come to luncheon," he directed, crisply energetic. "You have got to take out the Titan for its first run, this afternoon."

Effectively aroused, Corrie swung around.

"The Titan?" he echoed. "To-day?"

"Yes. Come on."

In the thin, clear March sunshine, two hours later, the Mercury Titan rolled out onto the mile track, shaking earth and air with its roar and vibrant clamor. The force of testers and factory operatives crowded about, busy men found time to cluster at the buildings' doors and windows in keen interest.

Opposite Gerard and his little staff, the men who had designed and evoked the winged monster, Corrie Rose was in his seat, flushed with excitement, but collected and at home in the powerful machine which he was to be the first to test and master. "Until you give it to its racing driver, let no one except me take it?" he had begged of Gerard. And Gerard had given the promise, smiling oddly.

But if Corrie was eager for the start, his mechanician palpably was not. The place beside the driver remained vacant until the last moment, when the reluctant Devlin slowly climbed into it.