“I’m going now,” he said, holding to his breast the hand she had given him. “And I will ask one thing of you—a thing I’ve never had and never shall, I suppose, again.”
“What is it, Jim?” But before his look she almost guessed and the guessing made her blanch.
“Let me take you in my arms and kiss you,” said Grainger.
“Ah, Jim!” Seeing herself as cruel, ungenerous, she yet, in a recoil of her whole nature, seemed to snatch from him a treasure, unclaimed, but no longer hers to give.
Grainger eyed her. “You could. You would—if it weren’t for him.”
“You understand that, too, Jim. I could and would.”
“He robs me of even that, then—your gift of courageous pity.”
His comprehension had arrested the recoil. And now the magnanimity she felt in him, the tragic force of the love he had seen barred from her forever, set free in her something greater than compassion and deeper than little loyalties, deeper than the lesser aspects of her own deep love. It was that love itself that seemed, with an expansion of power, to encircle all life, all need, all sorrow, and to find joy in sacrificing what was less to what was greater.
He saw the change that, in its illumined tenderness, shut away his craving heart yet drew him near for the benison that it could grant, and as she said to him, “No, Jim, he shall not rob you,” his arms went round her.
She shut her eyes to the pain there must be in enduring his passion of gratitude; but, though he held her close, kissing her cheeks, her brow, her hair, it was with a surprising, an exquisite tenderness.