Willy came nearer. His face was pale and his eyes were a little dim.
"Look here, Kath," he said, "you take my word for it, you were not born for unhappiness. By Jove! and you shan't have it either. You were meant for all the best and brightest things in the world, and, by Jove! you shall have them. I'll help you to get them—we'll all help you to get them; you must have anything you want—any one you want, only you mustn't be unhappy. I can't stand that—never could stand that—always was a fool about you, Kath—always shall be one—never could change if I wanted to; don't want to—unless—unless I could have been the man with the broken spirit."
Then Katharine forgot about herself and remembered only Willy. All her kind and generous feelings broke through the barrier of her grief. She sprang to her feet, brushed away her tears, and turned to him with impetuous eagerness.
"Willy," she said, "I've been a selfish brute pouring out my troubles to you in this way—poor old fellow! What have I done to you in return for your faithful kindness of all these years? Given you pain and disappointment and sadness, and never a glimmer of hope, and now my own selfish confidence about my feelings for another man. What can I do to ease your kind, unselfish heart? I know there is not much I can do—but there must be something. Let me do it, whatever it is."
A tumult came into Willy's heart. A light came into his eyes. He quenched the light; he quelled the tumult for her dear sake.
"There is one thing you can do for me, Kath," he said in a voice which trembled; "don't ever regret you trusted me and told me. You couldn't have told every one. It had to be the right person. Don't take that from me. And, you see, I knew. I knew by instinct. So don't reproach yourself. You've never been anything else except a brick to me ever since I can remember you."
She shook her head in deprecation of his praise, and said gently:
"I will never regret that I trusted you, Willy."
"Thank you, my dear," he said, with more of his old drawling manner again. "And now let's have another shot at my immortal masterpiece. That's right, Kath. Dry your eyes. Pull yourself together like Mary Queen of Scots did on the scaffold. By Jove! she must have been a stunner! I shall never believe that when her head dropped off, it was the head of a wizened-up old woman. If that was the truth, I don't want the truth. By Jove! here's tea. Margaret has gone off to a Cause, and mother has gone to a dentist and then to a Christian Science meeting. Those Christian Scientists pretend they can do without doctors, but they stick to the dentists right enough. No, I'll pour out the tea, Kath. You stay where you are, on the scaffold—I mean the platform. My word, what a brain I have! It isn't only slow, but it's so deucèd confused, isn't it?"
So he tried to cheer her; and when he took her to her home that afternoon, she had regained her outward composure, and felt all the better for having had the blessing of a true friend's kindness. His last words were, "Don't you dare to regret that you trusted me."