With a stiff nod to Baxter, he was gone.
"By Jove, how your brother does hate me," that young gentleman remarked. Then with a sudden change of mood that was one of his most charming gifts, he threw himself at her feet.
"I'm a beast, Millie; I'm everything I shouldn't be, but I do love you so! I do! I do! . . . The only decent thing in my worthless life, perhaps, but it's true."
And, for a wonder, it was.
On that particular afternoon he was very nearly frank and honest with her about many things. His love for her was always to remain the best and truest thing that he had ever known; but when he looked down into that tangle of his history and thence up into her clear, steadfast gaze his courage flagged—he could only reiterate again and again the one honest fact that he knew—that he did indeed love her with all the best that was in him. She knew that it was the perception of that that had first won her, and in all the doubts of him that were now beginning to perplex her heart, that doubt never assailed her. He did love her and was trying his best to be honest with her. That it was a poor best she was soon to know.
But to-day, tired and filled to the brim with ten hours' querulousness in the Cromwell Road household, she succumbed once more to a longing for love and comfort and reassurance. Once again she had told herself that this time she would force him to clarity and truth—once again she failed. He was sitting at her feet: she was stroking his hair; soon they were locked in one another's arms.