Her fingers had ceased their movements, and were quiet now.
“Yes,” she said.
Dave Henderson raised his bowed head. The dark eyes were closed. His shoulders squared a little.
“That—that puts it straight, then, Teresa,” he said. “That lets me say what I want to say now. I've done a lot of thinking in the last few hours when I thought that perhaps you weren't—weren't going to get better. I thought about what you said last night—about God giving one another chance if one wanted to take it. Teresa, would you believe me if I told you that I was going to take that chance—from now on?”
The dark eyes opened now.
“I don't think God ever meant that you would do anything else, Dave,” she said. “If He had, you would never have been caught and put in prison, and been through everything else that has happened to you, because it's just those things, Dave, that have made you say what you have just said. If you had succeeded in getting away with that money five years ago, you would have been living as a thief to-day, and—and you would have stolen more, perhaps, and—and at last you wouldn't even have been a man.” She turned her face away on the pillow, and fumbled for his hand. “But it isn't just you, Dave. I didn't say that last night. I said God offered us both a chance. It's not only you, Dave—both of us are going to take that chance.”
He leaned forward—his face tense, white almost as the white face on the bed.
“Together, Teresa?”
She did not answer—only her hand closed in a tighter clasp on his.
“Teresa!” He was bending over her now, smoothing back the hair from her forehead. The blood pounded in a mighty tide through his veins. “Teresa!”