"Do you think I'd be left?" I demanded.
Her eyes filled and as she turned from me, a tear fell on my hand.
"But your work, your career—oh, no, no, Ben, no."
"You are my career, darling, I have never in my heart had any career but you. What I am, I am yours, Sally, but there are things that I cannot give you because they are not mine, because they are not in me. These are the things that were George's."
Lifting my hand she kissed it gently and let it fall with a gesture that expressed an acquiescence in life rather than a surrender to love.
"I've sometimes thought that if I hadn't loved you first, Ben—if I could ever have changed, I should have loved George," she said, and added very softly, like one who seeks to draw strength from a radiant memory, "but I had already loved you once for all, I suppose, in the beginning."
"I am yours, such as I am," I returned. "Plain I shall always be—plain and rough sometimes, and forgetful to the end of the little things—but the big things are there as you know, Sally, as you know."
"As I know," she repeated, a little sadly, yet with the pathetic courage in her voice; "and it is the big things, after all, that I've wanted most all my life."
Then she shook her head with a smile that brought me to my knees at her side.
"You've forgotten the railroad," she said. "You've forgotten the presidency of the South Midland—that's what you wanted most."