She gave a little sob of joy, and pushing herself away from him an instant, she laid a hand on his shoulder.
"I told him," she said--"I told him, that night he was dying."
He looked at her with an emotion too deep even for caresses.
"He never spoke--coherently--after you left him. At the end he motioned to me, but there were no words. If I could possibly love you more, it would be because you gave him that joy."
He held her hand, and there was silence. Hallin stood beside them, living and present again in the life of their hearts.
Then, little by little, delight and youth and love stole again upon their senses.
"Do you suppose," he exclaimed, "that I yet understand in the least how it is that I am here, in this chair, with you beside me? You have told me much ancient history!--but all that truly concerns me this morning lies in the dark. The last time I saw you, you were standing at the garden-door, with a look which made me say to myself that I was the same blunderer I had always been, and had far best keep away. Bridge me the gap, please, between that h.e.l.l and this heaven!"
She held her head high, and changed her look of softness for a frown.
"You had spoken of "_marriage!_"" she said. "Marriage in the abstract, with a big _M_. You did it in the tone of my guardian giving me away.
Could I be expected to stand that?"
He laughed. The joy in the sound almost hurt her.
"So one"s few virtues smite one," he said as he captured her hand again.
"Will you acknowledge that I played my part well? I thought to myself, in the worst of tempers, as I drove away, that I could hardly have been more official. But all this is evasion. What I desire to know, categorically, is, what made you write that letter to me last night, after--after the day before?"
She sat with her chin on her hand, a smile dancing.
"Whom did you walk with yesterday afternoon?" she said slowly.
He looked bewildered.
"There!" she cried, with a sudden wild gesture; "when I have told you it will undo it all. Oh! if Frank had never said a word to me; if I had had no excuse, no a.s.surance, nothing to go upon, had just called to you in the dark, as it were, there would be some generosity, some atonement in that! Now you will think I waited to be meanly sure, instead of--"
She dropped her dark head upon his hand again with an abandonment which unnerved him, which he had almost to brace himself against.
"So it was Frank," he said--"_Frank!_ Two hours ago, from my window, I saw him and Betty down by the river in the park. They were supposed to be fishing. As far as I could see they were sifting or walking hand in hand, in the face of day and the keepers. I prepared wise things to say to them. None of them will be said now, or listened to. As Frank"s mentor I am undone."
He held her, looking at her intently.
"Shall I tell you," he asked, in a lower voice--"shall I show you something--something that I had on my heart as I was walking here?"
He slipped his hand into the breast-pocket of his coat, and drew out a little plain black leather case. When he opened it she saw that it contained a pen-and-ink sketch of herself that had been done one evening by a young artist staying at the Court, and--a bunch of traveller"s joy.
She gazed at it with a mixture of happiness and pain. It reminded her of cold and selfish thoughts, and set them in relief against his constancy.
But she had given away all rights--even the right to hate herself.
Piteously, childishly, with seeking eyes, she held out her hand to him, as though mutely asking him for the answer to her outpouring--the last word of it all. He caught her whisper.
"Forgive?" he said to her, scorning her for the first and only time in their history. "Does a man _forgive_ the hand that sets him free, the voice that recreates him? Choose some better word--my wife!"