"Nothing CAN—if you'll only take it…"
"I may lose it—"
"I sha'n't, if I've given it to you!" Her look followed his about the room and then came back to him. "Can't you imagine all it will make up for?"
The rapture of the cry caught him up with it. Ah, yes, he could imagine it all! He stooped his head above her hands. "I accept," he said; and they stood and looked at each other like radiant children.
She followed him to the door, and as he turned to leave he broke into a laugh. "It's queer, though, its happening in this room!"
She was close beside him, her hand on the heavy tapestry curtaining the door; and her glance shot past him to her husband's portrait. Ralph caught the look, and a flood of old tendernesses and hates welled up in him. He drew her under the portrait and kissed her vehemently.
XXXV
Within forty-eight hours Ralph's money was in Moffatt's hands, and the interval of suspense had begun.
The transaction over, he felt the deceptive buoyancy that follows on periods of painful indecision. It seemed to him that now at last life had freed him from all trammelling delusions, leaving him only the best thing in its gift—his boy.
The things he meant Paul to do and to be filled his fancy with happy pictures. The child was growing more and more interesting—throwing out countless tendrils of feeling and perception that delighted Ralph but preoccupied the watchful Laura.