"And you forgive me for having been so vile?"
"There is nothing to forgive, sweetheart; it was my fault for not making you understand; but I did it for the best, though I seem to have made a mess of it."
"And you like me just the same as you did before I was unkind to you?"
"My dear, don't you know?"
"You see, Chris, I was wanting you to be nice to me all the time—nothing else satisfied me instead of you. And when you seemed not to like me any longer, but to care for doing your duty more than for being with me, I got sore and angry, and decided to punish you for making a place for yourself in my heart and then refusing to fill it."
"Well, you did what you decided, as you generally do; there is no doubt of that. You were always very prone to administer justice and to maintain truth, Elisabeth, and you certainly never spared the rod as far as I was concerned."
"But now I see that I was wrong; I understand that it was because you cared so much for abstract right, that you were able to care so much for me; a lower nature would have given me a lower love; and if only we could go through it all again, I should want you to go to Australia after George Farringdon's son."
Christopher's thin fingers wandered over Elisabeth's hair; and as they did so he remembered, with tender amusement, how often he had comforted her on account of her dark locks. Now one or two gray hairs were beginning to show through the brown ones, and it struck him with a pang that he would no longer be here to comfort her on account of those; for he knew that Elisabeth was the type of woman who would require consolation on that score, and that he was the man who could effectually have administered it.
"I can see now," Elisabeth went on, "how much more important it is what a man is than what a man says, though I used to think that words were everything, and that people didn't feel what they didn't talk about. You used to disappoint me because you said so little; but, all the same, your character influenced me without my knowing it; and whatever good there is in me, comes from my having known you and seen you live up to your own ideals. People wonder that worldly things attract me so little, and that my successes haven't turned my head; so they would have done, probably, if I had never met you; but having once seen in you what the ideal life is, I couldn't help despising lower things, though I tried my hardest not to despise them. Nobody who had once been with you, and looked even for a minute at life through your eyes, could ever care again for anything that was mean or sordid or paltry. Darling, don't you understand that my knowing you made me better than I tried to be—better even than I wanted to be; and that all my life I shall be a truer woman because of you?"
But by that time the stupendous effort which Christopher had made for Elisabeth's sake had exhausted itself, and he fell back upon his pillows, white to the lips, and too weak to say another word. Yet not even the great Shadow could cloud the love that shone in his eyes, as he looked at Elisabeth's eager face, and listened to the voice for which his soul had hungered so long. The sight of his weakness brought her down to earth again more effectually than any words could have done; and with an exceeding bitter cry she hid her face in her arms and sobbed aloud—