He laughed aloud, somewhat shrilly.
"That's good!--considering we're to be man and wife."
"We're to be man and wife on a very distinct understanding to which I'm perfectly loyal. I mean to be loyal to it always—and to you. I shall give you everything you ever asked for. If there are some things—one thing in particular—out of my power to give you, I've said so from the first, and you've told me you could do without them. If what I can't give you I've given to some one else—because—because—I couldn't help it—that's my secret, and I claim the right to guard it."
They faced one another across the table piled with ornate silver. He had not lost his smile.
"You've the merit of being clear," was his only comment.
"You force me to be clear," she declared, with heightened color, "and a little angry. When you asked me to be your wife—long ago—I told you there were certain conditions I could never fulfil—and you waived them. On that ground I'm ready to meet all your wishes, and make you a good wife to the utmost of my power. I'm eager to do it—because I honor and respect you as women don't always honor and respect the very men they love. I've told Norrie Ford, and I repeat it to you, that after seeing him go free and restored to his place among men, the most ardent desire of my life is to make you happy. I'm perfectly true; I'm perfectly sincere. What more can you ask of me?"
He looked at her searchingly, while he thought hard and rapidly. He could not complain that the bars were up and the blinds drawn any longer. On the contrary, she had let him see into the recesses of her life with a clarity that startled him, as pure truth startles often. As he sat musing, his pretence at cynicism fell from him, together with something of his furbished air of youth. She saw him grow graver, grayer, older, under her very eyes, and was moved with compunction—with compassion. Her face still aglow and her hands clasped in her lap, she leaned to him across the table, speaking in the rich, low voice that always thrilled him.
"What I feel for you is ... something so much like ... love ... that you would never have known the difference ... if you hadn't wrung it from me."
Though he toyed aimlessly with some small silver object on the table and did not look up, her words sent a tremor through his frame. The Wise Man within him was very eloquent, repeating again and again the sentence she herself had used a minute or two ago: What more could he ask of her? What more could he ask of her, indeed, after this assurance right out of the earnestness and honesty of her pure heart? It was enough to satisfy men with far greater claims than he had ever put forth, and far more pretension than he had ever dreamed of cherishing. The Wise Man supplied him with two or three phrases of reply—neat little phrases, that would have bound her forever, and yet saved his self-esteem. He turned them over in his mind and on his tongue, trying to add a touch of glamour while he kept them terse. He could feel the Wise Man fidgeting impatiently, just as he could feel her flaming, expectant eyes upon him; and still he toyed with the small silver object aimlessly, conscious of a certain bitter joy in his soul's suspense. He had not yet looked up, nor polished the Wise Man's phrases to his taste, when a footman threw the door open, and Norrie Ford himself walked in.
The meeting was saved from awkwardness chiefly by Ford's own lack of embarrassment. As he crossed the room and shook hands, first with Miriam, then with Conquest, there was a subdued elation in his manner and glance that reduced small considerations to nothing.