"Those other chapters?" asked Frank. "I want them, for the picture is not complete."
"Yes, those other chapters. They are very short. Just this, Frank, that I loved you, and love you now. I see what your fear was: it was fear for me, not for yourself. You thought that if you painted this picture you would have to put something into it which I did not know—something you were afraid of my hearing. I know it, and I am not afraid. But the chapters we wrote together are still true; they are the truest part of all. Your picture is not complete. It wants the most essential part of all."
Once more she felt a tremor go through his arm, but still he said nothing.
"You told me I did not understand what you meant," she said, "but I understand now. And you too did not understand me if you thought that anything in the world could make any difference to my love for you. We have all of us in our natures something not nice to look at, but what we stand or fall by is our beautiful chapters. You cannot destroy them, Frank, though you thought you could, because they belong to me as well as you, and I will not have them destroyed. You thought you had lost them, but you have not. They are here. You may read them now with me."
Margery paused, and on the silence came the sudden, quick-drawn breath that opens the gates of tears. In a moment she felt Frank's arms round her, and his hands clasped about her neck.
"Margy! Margy!" he whispered, "have you got them now, even now? My God! how little I knew! You shrank from me, and I thought you had given me up; that there was nothing left to me but that—that horror. But what can I do? My judgment book is written. Is not that true too?"
"Do you remember what you said?" asked Margery. "Did you not tell me that you loathed what you were painting? Why did you loathe it?"
"Why did I loathe it? Why, because it was—something horrible, wretched!"
"Let us go to the studio," said Margery.
"No, no!" cried he; "anywhere but there."