Paul came in, looking grave; and greeted her with a gentle reserve.
A moment, they stood there as they had met, she with face pale, sad, that dared not lift itself; he, not trusting himself to the utterance of a word.
But he had come there, not to reproach, or to bewail; not even to plead. To hear—to bear with firmness—what she had to tell him. And there was, in truth, a new strength and nobleness in look and tone, when, presently, he spoke.
If he had had his way—if all had gone prosperously with him—he would have been, still—recipient of his father's bounty, and accepted of his childish love—scarcely more than a mere, happy boy. This pain, this struggle, this first rebuff of life, crowned him, a man.
Faith might have loved him, now, if she had so seen him, first.
Yet the hour would come when he should know that it had been better as it was. That so he should grow to that which, otherwise, he had never been.
"Faith! My father has told me. That it must be all over. That it was a mistake. I have come to hear it from you."
Then he laid in her hand his father's letter.
"This came with yours," he said. "After this, I expected all the rest."
Faith took the open sheet, mechanically. With half-blinded eyes, she glanced over the few earnest, fatherly, generous lines. When she came to the last, she spoke, low.