"And I knew you meant it!" he said, not without a dangerous touch of triumph in his voice. "If I were a little bolder than I am, I would carry you to another page of the poet whom we love, and ask if you ever remembered the words of Constance—words that you did not quote——"
Ten times more deeply she blushed at this, knowing almost by instinct the lines of which he thought. Had he not asked her to read "In a Balcony" to him the night before, and had she not found it impossible to keep her voice from trembling when she read Constance's passionate avowal of her love?
"I know the thriftier way
Of giving—haply, 'tis the wiser way;
Meaning to give a treasure, I might dole
Coin after coin out (each, as that were all,
With a new largess still at each despair),
And force you keep in sight the deed, preserve
Exhaustless till the end my part and yours,
My giving and your taking; both our joys
Dying together. Is it the wiser way?
I choose the simpler; I give all at once.
Know what you have to trust to trade upon!
Use it, abuse it—anything, but think
Hereafter, 'Had I known she loved me so,
And what my means, I might have thriven with it.'
This is your means. I give you all myself."
And in truth, that was the gift which Lettice offered to him—a gift of herself without stint or grudging, a gift complete, open-handed, to be measured by his acceptance, not limited by her reservation, Alan knew it; knew that absolute generosity was the essence of her gift, and that this woman, so far above him in courage, and self-command, and purity, scorned to close her fingers on a single coin of the wealth which she held out to him. And he, like Norbert, answered reverently: "I take you and thank God."
For just because he knew it, and was penetrated to the core by her munificence, he took the draught of love as from a sacred chalice, which a meaner nature would have grasped as a festal goblet. He might have grasped it thus, and the sacramental wine would have been a Circe's potion, and Lettice would have given her gift in vain. But nature does not so miscalculate her highest moods. "Spirits are not finely touched but to fine issues." Lettice's giving was an act of faith, and her faith was justified.
This was the true source of Alan's self-respect, and from self-respect there came a strength greater and more enduring than he had ever known before. Redeemed from the material baseness of his past when he changed the prison cell for Lettice's ennobling presence, he was now saved from the mental and moral feebleness to which he might have sunk by the ordeal through which his soul had passed.
Lettice felt that her work was accomplished, and she was supremely happy. When Clara Graham kept her promise, and came to see her friend—though she had not been able to bring her husband with her—she was struck by the blithe gaiety of Lettice's looks and words.
"There is no need to tell me that you are satisfied!" she said, kissing the tender cheeks, and gazing with wistful earnestness into the eyes that so frankly and bravely met her own.
"Satisfied?" Lettice answered, with something like a sigh. "I never dreamed that satisfaction could be so complete."
When Alan came in, and Clara, who had expected to see a face lined and marred with sorrow, found that he too had caught the radiance of unblemished happiness, she felt that Lettice had not spent her strength in vain. And she went home and renewed her efforts to make her husband see things as she saw them, and to give Alan Walcott his countenance in the literary world.