"Then or now," she said. "It's all the same. No, it isn't! Now more than then. With less regret. Without a shadow of a regret, John,—if it would bring you back to me."
The last words were muffled, for she had buried her face in her hands.
He had heard the ring of undisguised passion in her voice without an answering pulse-beat, sat looking at her thoughtfully, tenderly. The reflection that occupied his mind was with what extravagant joy he would have received such an assurance only a few weeks ago. On any one of those last days before his illness fastened upon him;—the Sunday he had gone to Hickory Hill alone because Paula had found she must work with March that day; the evening when he had made his last struggle against the approaching delirium of fever in order to telephone for an ambulance to get him out of that hated house. What a curious compound of nerve ends and gland activities a man's dreams—that he lived by, or died for—were!
She pulled him out of his reverie by a deliberate movement of resolution, taking her hands away from her face, half rising and turning her chair so that she faced him squarely.
"I want to know in so many words," she said, "why you're glad that I'm still bound to that Ravinia thing. You seem to want me to sing there this summer, as much as you hated the idea of my doing it before. Well, why? Or is it something you can't tell me? And if I sing and make a success, shall you want me to go on with it, following up whatever opening it offers; just as if—just as if you didn't count any more in my life at all?"
Before he could answer she added rather dryly, "Doctor Darby would kill me for talking to you like this. You needn't answer if it's going to hurt you."
"No," he said, "it isn't hurting me a bit. But I'll answer one question at a time, I think. The first thing that occurred to me when you spoke of the Ravinia matter was that I didn't want you to break your word. You had told them that they could count on you and I didn't want you, on my account, to be put in a position where any one could accuse you of having failed him. My own word was involved, for that matter. I told LaChaise I wouldn't put any obstacles, in your way. Of course, I didn't contract lobar pneumonia on purpose," he added with a smile.
The intensity of her gaze did not relax at this, however. She was waiting breathlessly.
"The other question isn't quite so easy to answer," he went on, "but I think I would wish you to—follow the path of your career wherever it leads. I shall always count for as much as I can in your life, but not—if I can help it—as an obstacle."
"Why?" she asked. "What has made the perfectly enormous difference?"