"I wrote it, darling. I was afraid you would not come unless I deceived you a little. But I signed it with my own name."
"Yerbua Eimalleb—what nonsense!" she sighed.
"It is only Aubrey Bellamie written backwards."
"Oh, you must not. How could you? It made me so happy. I thought at last I should have a friend, to drive the loneliness away—and now, it is all dark again and miserable. You are sending me back to the creeping, crawling shadows."
"I have given up the Navy. I have given up my people, and everything, for the one thing, the best thing, for you," Aubrey said.
Boodles put her head down, as if the wind had snapped her slender neck, and he kissed the hair just as he had done at different periods of her life, when she was a very small girl and the radiance was hanging down, and when she was rather a bigger girl and the radiance was up—and now. It was the best kiss of all, a man's kiss, the kiss which regenerated her and renounced all else.
"You don't know what you are saying. I am an illegitimate child. You must not give up anything for me."
Boodles had forgotten that it was the beginning of a new story. His great act of renunciation staggered her. Everything, birth, name, prospects, respectability, for her. She could not let him, but how was she to resist? She threw the sleep off, and said almost fiercely—
"You must not. The time may come when you will be sorry. I shall be a weight upon you, dragging you down. You might become ashamed of me."
"Darling, I have been true to you all my life. I will be true for the rest of it."