The words slipped from him. Caring for Mark, how could she have accepted Archibald? That cried to Heaven for explanation. He stared at her, seeing no reproach in her eyes, only a soft shadow of wonder—or was it regret—or something subtler than either.
"Oh, Jim, feeling as you do about religion, you can't understand. I was looking down, down into the depths. Archie taught me to look up."
"To him?"
"To God."
"You say that Archibald Samphire revealed God to you?"
"In that sermon at Windsor—yes. If you had heard it——"
"I heard of it. You will be the wife of a bishop some day."
He tried to give the conversation a lighter turn, fearing that she would speak again of Mark, understanding at last that Mark, standing under sentence of death, had deliberately hidden his heart from her. What else could such a man have done? And if Betty realised this, even now, at the eleventh hour, she might refuse to marry the silver-tongued brother. And because the temptation to tell her the truth was so poignant, he resisted it. It lay on his tongue's tip to exclaim: "Good Lord! Is it possible that you, with your intuitions and sympathies, have failed to divine Mark's love for you? Can't you understand that his love keeps him in Sutherland, that he dares not write for fear that he should reveal it?" At the same time, he knew that marriage between any young woman and a man suffering from an almost incurable malady was unthinkable. And if Betty could not marry Mark, was it not better from every point of view that she should marry his brother? Would not he (Jim) be taking upon himself a terrible responsibility if he broke the silence which Mark's self-sacrifice had made sacred? These, and a thousand other thoughts, jostled each other in his brain.
"That sermon touched me at first, because I thought it was Mark speaking. Not till then had I realised that Archie possessed the wonderful power of making life easier, happier, ampler; but why does Mark, if he cares nothing for me, stand aloof, why—why?"
"It is strange," he admitted slowly.