Val, resting on one knee, took the little grey mitten that she held out to him, and pressed the hand in it. But there was bitterness in his voice as he answered. "This is an entanglement that you'll find no way out of. You can't keep us both."
"You don't trust me," Lesley reproached him. "Just wait before deciding to give me up, until we've thoroughly thrashed things out, beginning at the beginning, and going right on to the end."
"I shan't decide to give you up; nothing can make me do that now," Loveland said. "It's Cremer who'll have to go to the wall."
Lesley laughed. "Like his motor. Poor, poor car—I'm sorry for it, but it hasn't sacrificed itself in vain. I was beginning to wonder how on earth to bring all this about. That was what kept me awake last night, if I'm to tell the whole truth. It had to come some way, and it had to come soon. Well, Sidney's motor-car has solved the difficulty, and Sidney will be glad, for my happiness is the same to him as his own. And now I've gone so far, I may as well confess that from the very minute I saw you play 'Lord Bob,' in that dingy little hall at Ashville, I hoped—oh, but hoped more than anything, that you would ask me to marry you. Please, please, don't be shocked, but I invited you to come here just for that."
Loveland was utterly at sea, or would have been if her hand had not lain in his, and if she had not begged him to wait and trust her.
"Yet, you were engaged to Sidney Cremer," he said, half to himself.
"I was bound to Sidney just as I am now, and just as I have been for the last three years. And I wasn't tired of him then, not a bit, and I'm not, even at this minute. But I love you—the Real You."
"Darling!" exclaimed Loveland. Yet he marvelled at her. This was a phase of the girl's character—her true and noble character—which he was at a loss to understand.
"You were very cold to me that night at Ashville," he ventured to say.
"I was trying you. I wasn't quite sure, you see, which side of the moon I was looking at; and if after all it was only the same old side, I didn't want to let myself be dazzled by it, as I couldn't help being at first. Oh, but don't misunderstand me! It wasn't the reflected light—the light of a high position—that had dazzled me. That never mattered. It was a different light—a light that never shone on land or sea, but shines just once, they say, in every woman's life. That means what I said before: that I was in love with you on the boat, even when I laughed at your talk of love. I felt more like crying than laughing, though, because the sort of love you gave me in return for mine wasn't worth my having. I was too good for it."