"I see your father. I see the man who was the only father I myself knew."
He bent over her. He kissed her forehead.
"Dear Elaine," he said hoarsely, "you see a man who is going to be a better man to you."
"To yourself, Ben,—be better to yourself! Are you going to be that?"
"That is the way,—by being a man to you and to the others."
"The others?"
"The unseen others. You must get Donaldson to tell you about the others."
She grasped his wrist with both her hands, looking up at him intently. Where was the change? A photograph would not have shown all the change. Yet it was there. Nor was this a temporal reformation based upon cowardly remorse. It showed too calm, too big an impulse for that. It was so sincere, so deep, that it did not need words to express it.
"I believe you, Ben," she said, "I believe you with all my heart and soul."
In the words he realized the divine that is in all women, the eagerness that is Christ-like in its eternal hunger to seize upon the good in man. He stooped again and with religious reverence kissed the white space above her eyes.