"And now, boy," whispered the girl, "are you bitter any more?"
"No," he answered, wonderingly. "I'm not. Because, Beryl, because I've thrashed that swine who killed him. Something seemed to snap in me as he went down and out, and I was conscious of a sort of marvellous happiness."
"I know," she said, laughing a little and crying a little, as a girl will do. "I know, dear boy. I saw you do it."
"You saw me thrash him!" he said, amazed. "But how? I don't understand."
"We all did!" she cried: "Uncle Jim and the Bishop and Mr. Trayne and me. Mr. Trayne came back and told us to come."
"I see," said the boy, slowly. "I see. I think I'll go and thank Mr. Trayne."
But there are other things in this world more important even than a debt of gratitude to the most celebrated of Actors, and half an hour later the boy and the girl were still pacing slowly up and down the lawn. There were so many things to be discussed—so many glorious plans to be made for the future—the future out of which the blackness had vanished so completely. And it was with almost a feeling of reproach that the girl suddenly turned to him.
"Why, boy!" she cried, "we've forgotten Tommy."
"Tommy!" he said. "Why, so we have." He stared at her for a while, and there was a little quizzical smile on his lips. "It's funny, isn't it?" he went on slowly, "that the greatest thing the little chap has ever done for me he has done by his death." He took her in his arms and held her very close. "If he'd lived, it might have all come right—in time; but now——"
And Hugh Dawnay finished his sentence in the only way such sentences can be finished.