Five minutes before she had asked, almost passionately, of her friend what she would do in such case. Now there was but one answer.
"Paul!" Her outstretched hand sought his, as he stood tall and straight trying to master his emotion, to preserve the calm to which he had schooled himself through the long journey which had ended here--here, where he might once have found rest; here, where all, save such self-respect as apology might leave him, was lost for ever.
"Paul--Oh! how tired you look--how cold your hands are! Come, dear--come and warm yourself; you must be perished!"
He did not speak, perhaps because the hoar frost of pride which had chilled his eyes melted before the radiance of hers; and hoar frost is but water after all. So she drew him to the fire, and then, still holding one hand as if loth to lose touch of it, knelt on one knee to stir the peats to a brighter blaze.
"I'm so glad you have come back," she said, with a little tremble in her voice; "so glad!" And then she looked up suddenly into the face above her, surprised at the almost painful strength of his grip. For Paul Macleod's composure was almost gone, and he was struggling hard for self-control. What she saw kept her silent; but she bent towards him till her soft, warm cheek touched his hand caressingly. The action, with its tale of tender solicitude, its boundless sympathy, was too much for him. He drew in his breath hard, and resting his arm on the mantelpiece turned from her to hide his face upon it, and so escape the pity in her eyes.
And he had dreamed of something so different! Of something coldly just, reasonably reproachful! Without a word she had guessed, had known, that he must be free to come, because he had come back.
"What is it, dear?" she asked softly, as she stood beside him. "Are you afraid that I am angry? Are you afraid that I care--about that? Paul! I do not choose to care--I will not. Look at me, and you will see if that is not the truth!"
What he saw was a face soft with the passion he knew so well--the passion which lies so perilously close to self--which claims so much, and resents so easily. But it was radiant also, as with a white flame of cleansing fire, pitiless in its purity.
"What is it to me?" she went on, her voice ringing clearer. "What is it to any woman unless she stoops to care? Oh! I understand now, Paul--I understand things of which I never even dreamed before; things which have been in your life--things which might have been in mine, perhaps--God knows!--if I had been in your place. But they are no more to me than this--a grief, a regret, because they are a stain upon your past, as all wrong must be. They are no more to me than that, because I do not choose to count them more!"
So, with a smile in her eyes, and a quiver of pain on her lips, she raised her face to his and kissed him.