"Let there be no more misunderstandings," she said, bravely. "We have all wronged you so deeply that you have a right to know the truth. Mr. Lansdale was my friend—as he was yours."
"But he meant to be more," Jeffard persisted—"and if he had come back with the courage of health to help him say it, you would not have denied him."
She made a little gesture of dissent.
"His health had nothing to do with it. And—and he said it before he went away."
Jeffard smiled. "You have halved the bitterness of it for me—as you would have lessened my reward if I had succeeded in bringing him back alive and well. My motive was mixed, as most human promptings are,—I can see that now,—but the better part of it was a desire to prove to you that I could do it for your sake. My debt to you is so large that nothing short of self-effacement can ever discharge it."
"How can you say that!" she burst out. "Wasn't I one of the three who ought to have believed in you?—the one who promised and failed and made it harder for you at every turn? You owe me nothing but scorn."
He contradicted her gravely. "I owe you everything that has been saved out of the wreck of the man who once sat beside you in the theatre and found fault with the world for his own shortcomings. You are remorseful now because you think you misjudged me; but you must believe me when I tell you that it was my love for you that saved me, at the end of the ends,—that kept me from doing precisely what you thought I had done. It was a fearful temptation. Garvin had fairly tossed the thing into the abyss."
"I know; but it was only a temptation, and you did not yield to it."
"No; I was able to put it aside in the strength born of four words of yours. At a time when I had forgotten God and so was willing to think that He had forgotten me, you said 'I believe in you.' You remember it?"
She nodded assent, looking up with shining eyes to say, "Don't make me ashamed that I hadn't the strength to go on believing in you."