When at last she had wondered herself into a state of inward readiness—a state still governed by her outward habit of resistance, this last was beaten down by a letter from Mrs. Tednick, who had been a school friend as Clara Tremaine, and was now married, apparently with results not too desirable.
"Never, my dear," ran the letter to Nancy, "permit yourself to think of marrying a man who has not a sense of humour. Do I seem flippant? Don't think it. I am conveying to you the inestimable benefits of a trained observation. Humour saves a man from being impossible in any number of ways—from boring you to beating you. (You may live to realise that the tragedy of the first is not less poignant than that of the second.) Whisper, dear!—All men are equally vain—at least in their ways with a woman—but humour assuredly preserves many unto death from betraying it egregiously. Beware of him if he lack it. He has power to crucify you daily, and yet be in honest ignorance of your tortures. Don't think I am cynical—and indeed, my own husband is one of the best and dearest of souls in the world, the biggest heart—but be sure you marry no man without humour. Don't think a man has it merely because he tells funny stories; the humour I mean is a kind of sense of the fitness of things that keeps a man from forgetting himself. And if he hasn't humour, don't think he can make you happy, even if his vanity doesn't show. He can't—after the expiration of that brief period in which the vanity of each is a holy joy to the other. Remember now!"
Curiously enough this well-intended homily had the effect of arousing in Nancy an instant sense of loyalty to Allan. She suffered little flashes of resentment at the thought that Clara Tremaine should seem to depreciate one toward whom she felt herself turning with a sudden defensive tenderness. And this, though it was clear to the level eye of reason that Clara must have been generalising on observations made far from Edom. But her loyal spirit was not less eager to resent an affront because it might seem to have been aimless.
And thereafter, though never ceasing to wonder, Nancy was won. Her consent, at length, went to him in her own volume of Browning, a pink rose shut in upon "A Woman's Last Word"—its petals bruised against the verses:
"What so false as truth is,
False to thee?
Where the serpent's tooth is,
Shun the tree.
"Where the apple reddens,
Never pry—
Lest we lose our Edens,
Eve and I.
"Be a god and hold me
With a charm!
Be a man and fold me
With thine arm!"
That was a moment of sweetness, of utter rest, of joyous peace—fighting no longer.
A little while and he was before her, proud as a conquerer may be—glad as a lover should.
"I always knew it, Nance—you had to give in."