Brown flushed, a peculiar dull red creeping up under his dark skin.  He smothered the retort on his lips, however, and when he did speak it was with entire control, though there was, nevertheless, an uncompromising quality in his inflection which for the moment silenced his sister as if he had laid his hand upon her mouth.

“Understand me, once for all, Sue—­if you can.  I am going into no monastery.  To such a man as I naturally am, I am going out of what has been a sheltered life into one in the open.  You think of me as retiring from the world.  Instead of that, I am just getting into the fight.  And to fight well—­I must go stripped.”

She shook her head again and walked over to the window, struggling with very real emotion.  At once he was beside her, and his arm was about her shoulders.  He spoke very gently now.

“Don’t take it so hard, dear girl.  I’m not going to be so far away that I can never come back.  You will see me from time to time.  I couldn’t get on without my one sister—­with father and mother gone, and the brothers at the other side of the world.  Come, cheer up, and help me decide what disposal to make of my stuff.  Will you take the most of it?”

She turned about, presently, dried her eyes determinedly, and surveyed the room.  It was a beautiful room, the sombre hues of its book-lined walls relieved by the rich and mellow tones of its rugs and draperies, the distinguished furnishings of the writing-table, and the subdued gleam of a wonderful reading-lamp of wrought copper which had been given to Brown by Sue herself.

“If you will let me,” she said, “I’ll give up one room to your things and put all these into it.  Aren’t you even going to take your books?”

“I must—­a couple of hundred, at least.  I can’t give up such old friends as these.”

“A couple of hundred—­out of a couple of thousand!”

“There are five thousand in this room,” said Brown cheerfully.  “But two hundred will give me a very good selection of favourites, and I can change them from time to time.  I have sixty or seventy already with me....  Hello!  Who can that be?  Has Brainard been giving me away right and left?”

He answered the ring, and admitted Webb Atchison, rosy of cheek and rather lordly of appearance, as always.  The bachelor came in, frowning even as he smiled, and bringing to Donald Brown a vivid suggestion of old days.

“Caught!” he cried, shaking hands.  “Thought you could sneak in and out of town like a thief in the night, did you?  It can’t be done, old man.”

He was in a hurry and could stay but ten minutes.  Five of those he devoted to telling Brown what he thought of the news he had heard, by which he understood that St. Timothy’s was to lose permanently the man whom it had expected soon to have back.  Brown listened with head a little down-bent, arms folded again, lips set in lines of determination.  He had been fully prepared for the onslaughts of his friends, but that fact hardly seemed to make it easier to meet them.  When Atchison had delivered himself uninterrupted, Brown lifted his head with a smile.