He knew that, during those last minutes, she had been struggling desperately. She came up to him victorious and, smiling and putting her hand into his, said:
"Tell me what you think about him."
"Simply that he seems to me a wonderful fellow. He seems to you, I expect, a little dull. You've always laughed at him a bit, and for that very reason, and because he's loved you for so long, he's tongue-tied when you're there and shy of showing you what he really thinks about things. He has immense qualities of character—fidelity, honesty, devotion, courage—things simply beyond price, and if you loved him and showed him that you did you'd probably see quite new things—fun and spontaneity and imagination—things that he had always been afraid to show you until now."
Her hand trembled in his.
"You speak," she said, "as though you thought that you were so much older than both of us. I don't feel that you are. Can't you——" she broke off. He knew what she would say.
"My dear," and his voice was eloquently paternal, "I am older than both of you—years and years older. Not physically, perhaps, so much, but in every other kind of way. I am an old fogey, nothing else. You've both of you been kind to me to-night, but in the morning, when ordinary life begins again, you'll soon see what a stuffy old thing I am. No, no. Think of me as your uncle. But don't miss—oh, don't miss!—the love of a man like Dunbar. There's so little of that unselfish devoted love in the world, and when it comes to you it's a crime to miss it."
"But you can't force yourself to love any one!" she cried, sharply.
"No, you can't force yourself, but it's strange what seeing new qualities in some one, looking at some one from another angle, will do. Try and look at him as though you'd met him for the first time, forget that you've known him always. I tell you that he's one in a million!"
"Yes, he's good," she answered softly. "He's been wonderful to me always. If he'd been less wonderful perhaps—I don't know, perhaps I'd have loved him more. But why are we talking about it? Aren't I married as it is?"
"Oh that!" He made a little gesture of repulsion. "We must get rid of that at once."