This time he took her hand in his. Now that the artificial union between them was done away with, their real friendship for each other came back and took its rightful place in their lives.
"Why shouldn't we, Beatrice?" he said. "Heaven knows, we both have need of friends."
"It is a strange thing," she continued thoughtfully, "that, though you are so completely my opposite, I have always liked you. Even when you most jarred upon me with your prunes-and-prisms morality, I was never able quite to close my heart. I wonder why?"
He could not repress a faint amusement at the flash of her old self.
"It has been the same with me," he said. "Even when you trod on all my principles at once, I haven't been able to smother a sort of shamefaced respect for you. You always seemed more worthy of respect than—well, some of the others."
"I suppose it is our sincerity," she said. "You are sincere in your goodness, and I, paradoxical as it sounds, in my badness."
"I think not," he answered, looking her gravely in the face. "I think it is because the hidden best in both of us recognized each other and held out the hand of friendship almost without our knowing."
She smiled, but he saw a light sparkle in her eyes.
"Oh, practical John, you are making fast progress in the soul's world!
Who has taught you?"
He turned away from her back to the table and stood there gazing out over the garden.