"Do you think, if my love was returned, Carden, that I should be here?"
"Love!" The man's voice was not raised one tone, but the tent vibrated with the passionate words. "Are you such a coward that you run away at the first hurt? When the ball struck you in the face at Lords, did you retire—hurt? No; you stuck it, and scored a century! Are you such a dullard that you cannot read beneath a woman's yes and no? Love! Do you know what love means? What would you do for love? Could you forgive in love?"
Kelham stared at the man who, word for word, repeated, the question
Damaris had asked on the night he had proposed to her.
"If you heard tongues gossiping out of jealousy of the woman, you loved; if you found her in a situation which could not easily be explained; if she, hurt, wounded, had run like a little child to another to beg for balm for her wound,—tell me, would you forgive her? Tell me!"
There was a strange insistency in the repeated question and a deep anxiety in his eyes, which passed as Kelham laughed.
It was the genuine, honest laugh of the man who loves and is willing to shoulder the burdens, great and small, which love brings in her train.
"You say there is no 'have-been' in love, Carden. I say there is no question of forgiveness in love. You love, and there is no room anywhere for anything else but love."
A great silence fell; the silence of two strong men who for one moment had broken through the barbed-wire of convention, to be their natural selves; the silence heralding the birth of a new day.
There was no sound, as the hands of Fate pointed to the full hour.
It all happened and was over even as the hour struck.