"More than that, and yet once I—Jessica, Jessica! When I woke this morning in the cabin down there, it seemed to me for a moment that only last night was real, and all the past an ugly dream. How could you have loved me? And how could I have thrown my pearl away?"
"We are not to think of that," she protested, "never, never any more."
"You are right," he rejoined cheerfully; "it is what is to come that we must think of." He paused an instant, then he said:
"Last night, when you told me of the white house in the aspens, I did not tell you that I had just come from there—from Aniston."
She made an exclamation of wonder. "Tell me," she said.
Sitting with her hand in his, he told of that night's experiences, the fear that had held him as he gazed at her portrait in the library, the secret of the Korean desk that had solaced his misery and sent him back to the father he was not to see.
At mention of the will she threw out her hand with a passionate gesture. "The money is not mine!" she cried. "It is yours! He intended to change it—he told me so the day he died. Oh, if you think I—"
"No, no," he said gently. "There is no resentment, no false pride in my love, Jessica. I am thinking of you—and of Aniston. You would have me go back, would you not?"
She looked up smiling and slowly shook her head. "You are a blind guesser," she said. "Don't you think I know what is in your mind? Not Aniston, Hugh. Sometime, but not now—not yet. It is nearer than that!"