While these thoughts were racing through his head, Gibson put his hand on his shoulder.
"You need not answer, Gallant," he said, "because your silence is enough. Regardless of how incongruous it seems in view of the great wrong I have done her, I love her, too. And, because I love her I can tell that you do. I can see it by the way you speak to her, the way you look at her and unless I am greatly mistaken she knows it as well as you and I do."
He grasped John's left hand in his own.
"Take care of her, Gallant; love her and try to make her happy," he said. He turned and walked to the door, leaving John speechless and motionless, staring after him. At the threshold he wheeled to face them again.
"Exit, the villain," he said slowly and smiling.
The door closed behind him and his footsteps, taking him steadily, not too fast, not too slowly, from the house, diminished until the only sound audible in the room was the ticking of the clock on the mantel of the fireplace.
John, his back toward Consuello, his eyes on the door, wondering whether it was all a dream, a cheer in his heart for the man who had left them so dramatically, feared to move.
"Exit, the villain"—Gibson's last words—echoed in his brain.
He imagined he heard Brennan saying: "A grandstander, a grandstander to the last."
When he finally turned around, Consuello was standing by the open casement window, looking out into the night, her fingers touching the petals of the geraniums on the sill, in the same position in which she had stood when she had recited to him the little verse with its simple, homely philosophy.