The old gaiety was in his voice, but as she looked at him a ray of faint sunshine fell on his face through a parting in the leaves overhead, and she saw for the first time how much older he had grown since that last evening in Tappahannock. The dark hair was all gray now, the lines of the nose were sharper, the cheek bones showed higher above the bluish hollows beneath. Yet the change which had so greatly aged him had deepened the peculiar sweetness in the curves of his mouth, and this sweetness, which was visible also in his rare smile, moved her heart to a tenderness which was but the keener agony of renouncement.
"I know how it is," she said slowly, "just as in Tappahannock you found your happiness in giving yourself to others, so you will find it here."
"If I can only be of use—perhaps."
"You can be—you will be. What you were with us you will be again."
"Yet it was different. There I had your help, hadn't I?"
"And you shall have it here," she responded, brightly, though he saw that her eyes were dim with tears.
"Will you make me a promise?" he asked, stopping suddenly before some discoloured stone steps "will you promise me that if ever you need a friend—a strong arm, a brain to think for you—you will send me word?"
She looked at him smiling, while her tears fell from her eyes. "I will make no promise that is not for your sake as well as for mine," she answered.
"But it is for my sake—it is for my happiness."
"Then I will promise," she rejoined gravely, "and I will keep it."