"I told you you'd find all sorts of unexpected virtues in me," he lightly announced; and it was the familiar Laurie who smiled down at her. "There are dozens more you don't dream of. I'll reveal them to you guardedly. They're rather overwhelming."
She smiled vaguely at his chatter, but it was plain that she was following her own thoughts.
"The most wonderful thing about you," she said, "is that through this whole experience, you've never, for one single instant, been 'heroic.' You're not the kind to 'emote'!"
"Great Scott!" gasped Laurie, startled. "I should hope not!"
He could look at her now, and he did, his heart filled with the satisfying beauty of her. She was still leaning forward a little in the low chair, with her hands unconventionally clasped around one knee, and her eyes staring into the fire. A painter, he reflected, would go mad over the picture she made; and why not? He himself was going mad over it, was even a little light-headed.
She wore again the gown she had worn the first day he saw her, and the memory of that poignant hour intensified the emotion of this one. Taking her in, from the superb masses of hair on her small head to the glittering buckles on her low house-shoes, Laurie knew at last that whoever and whatever this girl might be, she was the one whose companionship through life his hungry heart demanded. He loved her. He would trust her, blindly if he must, but whatever happened fully and for all time.
There had been a long silence after his last words, but when she spoke it was as if there had been no interval between his chatter and her response.
"Almost any other man would have been 'heroic,'" she went on. "Almost any other man would have been excited and emotional at times, and then would have been exacting and difficult and rebellious over all the mystery, and the fact that I couldn't explain. I've set that pace myself," she confessed. "I haven't always been able to take things quietly and—and philosophically. The wonderful thing about you is that you've never been overwhelmed by any situation we've been in together. You've never even seemed to take them very seriously. And yet, when it came to a 'show-down,' as Shaw says, you've been right there, always."
He made no answer to this. His mind was caught and held by the phrase "as Shaw says." So she and Shaw had talked him over! He recalled the silver-framed photograph of her on Shaw's mantel, the photograph whose presence had made him see red; and a queer little chill went down his spine at this reminder of their strange and unexplained association. Then, resolutely, he again summoned his will and his faith, and became conscious that she was still speaking.
"You're the kind," she said, "that in the French Revolution, if you had been a victim of it, would have gone to the guillotine with a smile and a jest, and would have seen in the experience only a new adventure."