"Don't grieve," she whispered; "it doesn't hurt."
"Oh, my dear, my dear! You, and my mother, too—helpless with both!"
"The many," she said faintly, "think of the many you've pulled through. You've ... been very good to me ... very good."
To his despair it seemed that ever since they met she had been telling him that. It was the dole that she had yielded, the atom that his devotion had ever wrung from her—she found him "good"!
And even as she said it, her eagerness caught the footfall, that she had been waiting for; and she nestled lower on the pillow, trying to hide her disfigurement from view.
"Mary," said Kincaid, "you didn't care for me; but will you let me kiss you on the forehead—while you know?"
A smile—a smile of tenderness wonderfully new and strange to him irradiated her face; and, turning, he saw the other man had come in.