He threw it into the fire;
and, with a sombre satisfaction, watched it sizzle. This brief
pleasure ended, he became expressionless and relapsed into
complete mummification.
Potter cleared his throat several times, and as many times
seemed about to speak, and did not; but finally, hearing a
murmur from the old man gazing at the fire, he requested to be
informed of its nature.
"What?" Tinker asked, feebly.
"I said: 'What are you mumbling about?'"
"Nothing."
"What was it you said?"
"I said it was the bride-look," said the old man gently. "That's
what it was about her--the bride-look."
"The bride-look!"
It was a word that went deep into the mourning heart of the
playwright. "The bride-look!" That was it: the bride's
happiness!
"She had more than that," said Potter peevishly, but, if the
others had noticed it his voice shook. "She could act! And I
don't know how the devil to get along without that hypocrite.
Just like her to marry the first regular man that asked her!"
Then young Stewart Canby had a vision of a room in a boarding-
house far over in Brooklyn, and of two poor, brave young people
there, and of a loss more actual than his own--a vision of a
hard-working, careworn, stalwart Packer trying to comfort a
weeping little bride who had lost her chance--the one chance--
"that might never have come!"
Something leaped into generous life within him.
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