Joy! I do not know which I thought of at that moment, joy or sorrow, Cuthbert or Hildred, the sudden shock of their meeting to her, or the blow it might bring to him.
'Let me go to her first,' I said eagerly: 'let me tell her.' I do not know what I meant to do. I think I had some wild idea of imploring her to love him.
Cuthbert looked surprised. 'No, no,' he said, 'I want to see her first glad look. Don't keep me.'
I suppose in my perturbation I was going to follow him, for he stopped and said, 'Let me go alone, Will. Dear old fellow, I don't want even you when I first see my Hildred.'
I let him go—let him go to her whom he called his own. He was right—his, not mine. And I had been so madly glad to see him!
Cuthbert was not gone for very long. He came in slowly, came up to me, and—he had not done it since we were little boys together—bent down and kissed me. My heart was beating hard and fast.
'You have seen her?'
'Yes'—he sank down wearily into a chair—'I have seen her.'
'Well?'
'Well'—he looked up and smiled rather sadly—'Well, the joy did not kill her, you see.'