And then Joyce told him how she had come in out of the rain and heard him talking, and tried to reach him and failed.
The sun dropped lower in the west and the long shadows came within their sweet retreat. Finally, they sat in silence, just listening to the birds, and the tinkle of the water, feeling how good it was to be here after the years.
Suddenly Darcy began to speak again:
“Joyce, I’m going to tell you something. You may think perhaps I oughtn’t to tell you, that I have no right to speak of such things—that I am unworthy. But somehow I think you ought to know. After I’ve told you I’m not going to presume upon it. I know as well as you do that I’m unworthy. But I’ve loved you all my life, and it’s kept me from a great deal that I might have done if I hadn’t. I never dreamed of you as mine, not in any material sense of the word. I always knew I wasn’t big enough and good enough for you, but I’ve kept you like a shrine in a temple, a place to worship at. You can’t know what it’s meant to me. I’m telling you this because it’s the only way I can thank you for what you did for me. You saved my life, and I want you to know that all that a man has to give a woman, that I have given to you. There will never be any other girl for me!”
Joyce’s head was turned away. She was trying to keep the blinding joy of her heart from leaping to her eyes.
“And you refuse to let me give anything back to you?” she asked in a little faltering voice.
“What do you mean, Joyce?” He lifted his eyes and looked at her anxiously.
“I mean, does it mean nothing to you that I have loved you too, ever since the day we were here last?”
He caught her hand.
“Joyce! Do you mean that? You loved me all that time? But of course you did not know me, did not know that I was—”