He sat upright and smiled, but tears stood in her eyes; she could make no response. After a moment he asked her: "You are to be married soon?"
"No," she answered, and gained command of herself. "We must wait a while—and you know it is very slow, rising in Mr. Wayne's business."
"Yes." Then he rose and held out his hand; she gave him hers at once. "I will go," he said. "Do not reproach yourself, and—God bless you always!" He bent and kissed her hand, smiled again, and then was gone.
She sat down, miserable. Not his brave cheerfulness, nor his almost comic quoting of the old-fashioned couplet, could drive from her the knowledge that his heart was bleeding. Slowly the tears welled out upon her cheeks.
Then Wayne entered joyously. "I passed old Pease on the steps, and he didn't see me. What's wrong with him?"
She ran to him. "Oh, Jim!" she cried, and clung to him, weeping.
"Oho! Indeed?" he exclaimed, and horrified her by loud laughter.
Pease had not noticed whom he passed upon the steps. For a moment after leaving the house he had stood in the vestibule, looking at the setting sun. One would have said that its splendour passed into his face and illumined it; indeed, a glory entered him at that moment, an ecstacy of self-forgetfulness. The sunset faded quickly, but the inner light still shone on his face as he went homeward.
Miss Cynthia saw it when he entered the parlour where she was sitting. Her cousin had never appeared so to her before, and for a moment she mistook. "Is it possible?" she asked herself.