"With you beside me, and all the dear old set round me, and Meriton behind me, I ought to be able to get through," he said to Vivien as they walked together in the wood at Nutley before dinner.
She stopped by a bench, rudely fashioned out of a tree trunk. "Lend me your knife, Andy, please."
He gave it to her, and stood watching while she stooped and scratched with the knife on the side of the bench. Certain initials were scratched out.
"What's that?" he asked, pointing to the spot where they had been.
"Only a memorandum of something I don't want to remember any more," she answered. She came back to him, blushing a little, smiling, yet with tears in her eyes. "Yes, Meriton, and the old friends, and I—we're all with you now—all of us with all our hearts now, dear Andy!"
Andy made his last protest. "I'd have been loyal to him all my life, if he'd have let me!"
"I know it. And so would I. But he wouldn't let us." She took his arm as they turned away from the bench. "The sorrow must be in our hearts always, I think. But now it's sorrow for him, not for ourselves, Andy."
In the hour of his own triumph, because of the greatness of his own joy, tenderness for his friend revived.
"Dear old chap! How handsome he looked to-day!"
Vivien pressed his arm. "You can say that as often as you like! There's no danger from him now!"