“You are tired out,” he exclaimed in quick commiseration. “What a brute I am, letting you stand all this time, after your long journey too! I have told myself over and over how I would take care of you if I might, and this is how I begin! Forgive me—.”
He gently pushed her towards his own big chair, and when she had sunk down in it, fetched a cushion and a footstool. She leaned back wearily, looking up at him with eyes that were full of deep joy, if not yet emancipated from their long, long vigil of sorrow.
“Is this all true, or am I dreaming? Yesterday—an hour ago—I thought it could never happen at all.”
“I too.”
He was kneeling on one knee beside her now, holding her hand against his face for the comfort of it.
“I was thinking of you when you came. I am always thinking of you. My whole life is like a long thought of you. I was afraid it would never become any more. Since I grew to know myself better, it has never seemed possible any one like you could care for such as I.”
She gave him her other hand confidingly.
“I think I have always cared, Dudley. Beside Basil, there has never been any one else who counted very much at all.”
It was good to be sitting there together by a fireside. So good indeed that it swept everything away that had stood between them, with swift, generous sweeping. There had been nothing real in the barrier, scarcely anything that needed explaining, only the foolish imaginings of two hearts that had become imbued with wrong impressions.
“I thought I loved Doris,” he told her, still caressing her hand; “but afterwards it was like a pale fancy to my love for you.”