“What do you think of her decision?” asked Lady Ingleby.
“I think it proved her to be a very just-minded woman, and a very unusual one, if she keeps to it. But it would be rather like a woman, to make a fine decision such as that during the tension of a supreme moment, and then indulge in private speculation afterwards.”
“Did you hear her reason, Jim? She said she did not wish that a man should walk this earth, whose hand she could not bring herself to touch in friendship.”
“Poor loyal soul!” said Jim Airth, greatly moved. “Myra, if I got accidentally done for, as Ingleby was,—should you feel so, for my sake?”
“No!” cried Myra, passionately. “If I lost you, my belovèd, I should never want to touch any other man’s hand, in friendship or otherwise, as long as I lived!”
“Ah,” mused Jim Airth. “Then you don’t consider Lady Ingleby’s reason for her decision proved a love such as ours?”
Myra laid her beautiful head against his shoulder.
“Jim,” she said, brokenly, “I do not feel myself competent to discuss any other love. One thing only is clear to me;—I never realised what love meant, until I knew you.”
A long silence in the honeysuckle arbour.
Then Jim Airth cried almost fiercely to the woman in his arms: “Can you really think you have been right to keep me waiting, even for a day?”