He held her fast.
'My darling,' he whispered, 'do you think I could leave you now I have found you? I have come to ask you to come back to me. I have come to ask you to marry me. You will not send me away. I cannot do without my little one any longer. You love me still?' he added, a sudden doubt striking him at her continued silence, and he raised her chin with his hand till he could look in her face. She shrank from his hand, and hid her face against his neck.
'You know,' she answered, 'you know.'
So it came about that Alice married her love who had not been true, and forgave him with all her heart; when she was leaving the church, leaning on her husband's arm, with a new world of love and joy opening before her, and Litvinoff was looking down at her with eyes in which love deepened every moment, her father lay dead at the bottom of the tank in Thornsett Mill. The Litvinoffs left England at once, and to this day Alice does not know of her father's death, and her husband does not know of the dire disaster that followed on his double dealing. I doubt if they will ever learn it now. There is a good deal more that Alice does not know. It is perhaps as well. Wives are none the happier for knowing too much of their husbands' past. As it is, Alice will follow him to the world's end, believing in him unquestioningly.
'HAND IN HAND.'