He was pleading as a beggar might have pleaded for the crumbs beneath the table, and all that was generous in her responded. The hesitation, the vague uneasiness passed. She gave him her hand.
"Of course! We have always been friends—we must always be friends."
"Thank you, dear. That is a great deal to me. No other woman will ever come into my life."
"Don't!" she exclaimed, painfully moved. "You make me feel that I have spoilt your life."
"But you haven't, Nora. You are just the only woman I could ever have loved, and if I had not met you I should be even lonelier than I am. At least I have your friendship."
His tone was composed, almost cheerful, but she felt that he was at the end of his strength, and when, after a quick pressure of the hand, he went towards the door, she made no effort to recall him. Her own voice was strangled, and perhaps her face revealed more than she knew, more than she was actually conscious of feeling—a regret, an appeal, an almost childish loneliness. As though answering an unexpected cry of pain, he turned suddenly and looked at her. He saw the all-betraying tears, and the next minute he had come back to her side and had taken her hands and kissed them.
"You must not!" he said gently. "You are to be happy—as I am. Forgive me; it is the seal upon our friendship—and a farewell."
She had not resisted. She would have forgiven him, because she understood; she would have put the moment's surrender to passion from her memory as something pardoned, but fate took the power of forgiving and forgetting from her. For the door had opened, and Miles stood on the threshold, watching them with an expression of blank amazement on his flushed, excited face.
Arnold turned, too late conscious that they were not alone, and Miles's amazement changed to a loud delight.
"If it isn't old Arnold!" he exclaimed, flinging coat and hat on to the nearest chair and stretching out an unsteady hand. "Why, we thought you were dead and buried in some African wilderness, didn't we, Nora?"