"It is all strength and all beauty," she said simply. Then she added in another voice, "You have made me very humble."
She sighed pitifully as she looked at the pile of written pages.
"I have only imitated you," he declared.
"Imitated me?" she echoed.
"Yes. All along it was The Silver Poppy that was my model—that I tried to follow from first to last."
"I feel as though you had given me a mental flogging," she broke in. "None of this is mine! None of it," she cried passionately. "None of it, by right," she added as she gazed at the topmost sheet. "I was only the mouse who pulled the thorn out of the lion's paw, and look what he has done for me."
"But see what you have done, what you are doing for me!" he cried impetuously. "And see what you can do, what some day you must do."
She held up a hand as though to bar it back, as though it were something that still confounded her better judgment and might lead to lifelong mistakes and sorrows.
Then he added, more gently: "Every page of this, Cordelia, is quite as much yours as mine. You suggested it, you inspired it. If it were not for you, dear, it should never have been written."
His hand was on the throttle of sacrifice, and he seemed bent on racing the engine of self-abnegation to its last wheel-turn. Her face lighted up with a new and fierce fire as he spoke. He wondered if that happy smile was born of his first more intimate use of her Christian name.