“But are we not as good as married now?”
“Yes—that’s it. And I want it to keep on. I never cared for anybody until I saw you. I shall never care for anybody else. I never shall try. I want you as long as I can have you. And then——”
“And then,” Howard laughed or rather, pretended to laugh, “and then, ‘Oh, dig me a grave both wide and deep, wide and deep.’ How like twenty-years-old that is.”
She seemed not to hear his jest and presently went on: “Do you remember the evening before I left, down there at Mrs. Sands’s?”
“The night you proposed to me?” Howard said, pulling her ear.
She smiled faintly and continued: “I thought it all out that night. I intended to come back just as I did. I went deliberately. I——”
Howard put his hand over her lips.
“O, I am not going to tell anything,”, said she, evading his fingers. “Only this—that I understood you then, understood just why you would never marry. Not so clearly as I understand it now, but still I—understood. And you have been teaching me ever since, teaching me manners, teaching me how to read and think and talk. And more than all, you’ve taught me your way of looking at life.”
Howard held her away from him and studied her face, surprise in his eyes. “Isn’t it strange?” he said.
“Here I’ve been seeing you day after day all this time, have had a chance to know you better than I ever knew any one in my life, have had you very near to me day and night. And just now, as I look at you, I see the real you for the first time in two years.”