Fuller, his dark face marvellously heated, looked full at his chief.
"I've asked the girl to marry me, Sir Julian," he remarked.
Some weeks later, Julian wrote a letter, and addressed it to Miss Marchrose in London.
My dear Pauline Marchrose,
Since you ask for my opinion, I send it to you for what it is worth, admitting that, as you say, I stand committed to a certain degree of officiousness already. That, however, is not the word of which you made use. Thank you, on the contrary, for the expressions that you have selected.
I am glad that you are marrying Fuller. He is a good fellow through and through, and the other side of his bulldog tenacity is a very real and dependable loyalty. I think that that loyalty will be of great service to you. And don't think that you are relinquishing the abstract ideal of which we spoke one afternoon down by the sea-wall. You were never false to your standards for a moment, and to recognise defeat is not always an implication of weakness. It may, as in your case, denote the courage of a perfectly sincere outlook. Humbug is the only thing to be afraid of. You have eliminated that, and Fairfax Fuller is not prone to illusion or self-deception. Besides, your intercourse took place at a time and in circumstances which admitted of the luxury of sincerity. For that, and for the fact that Fuller knows something of the extent of his incredible good fortune, I send you my congratulations and I wish you luck.
Sir Julian paused for a long while.
The episode was over. His letter was a postscript merely.
"Are you coming upstairs, Julian?" said Edna's most forbearing tones, full of fatigue.