“No,” he said quickly, as he recognised the indignant question which instantly showed in her eyes, “I’m not disloyal to Eleanor Langham. Because—dear—there is no such person.”
With a little cry she flung herself away from him among the pillows, hiding her face from sight. There was a moment’s silence while Anthony Robeson, his own face growing pale with the immensity of the stakes for which he played, made his last venture.
“The little home is only for you, Juliet. If you won’t share it with me it shall be closed and sold. Perhaps it was an audacious thing to do—it has come over me a great many times that it was too audacious ever to be forgiven. But I couldn’t help the hope that if you should make the home yourself you might come to feel that life with a man who had his way to make could be borne after all—if you loved him enough. It all depended on that. As I said, I didn’t mean to be presumptuous, but it was a desperate chance with me, dear. I couldn’t give you up, and I thought perhaps—just perhaps—you cared—more than you knew. Anyhow—I loved you so—I had to risk it.”
Juliet’s charming brown head was buried so deep in the pillows that only its back with the masses of waving, half-rumpled hair was visible. But up from the depths came a smothered question:
“The photograph?”
Anthony’s face lightened as if the sun had struck it, but he kept his voice quiet. “Borrowed—it’s my old friend Dennison’s. I never even saw the girl—though I ought to beg her pardon for the use I have made of her face. She’s married now, and lives abroad somewhere. Will you forgive me?”
He was standing over her, leaning down so that his cheek touched the rumpled hair. “How is it, Juliet? Could you live in the little home—with love—and me?”
It was a long time before he got any answer. But at last a flushed, wet, radiant face came into view, an arm was reached out, and as with an inarticulate, deep note of joy he drew her up into his embrace, a voice, half tears, half laughter, cried:
“Oh, Tony—you dear, bad, darling, insolent boy! I did think I could do without you—but I can’t. And—oh, Tony”—she was sobbing in his arms now, while he regarded the top of her head with laughing, exultant eyes—“I’m so glad—so glad—so glad—there isn’t any Eleanor Langham! Oh, how I hated her!”
“Did you, sweetheart?” he answered, laughing aloud now. Then bending, with his lips close to hers—“well, to tell the truth—to tell the honest truth, little girl—so did I!”