“Yes,” she said. “And I think, perhaps,—if you’d let me,—I could help at that kind of work.”
“I know you could!” said Clifford. He went on, after a brief pause: “And we talked of something else, Mary,—the Chief and I. He told me again of that talk he had had with you when you went to him almost a year ago; and, Mary,”—his voice lowered,—“our talk became for me a searchlight thrown backward upon all that has happened these last few months, and especially a searchlight upon you, Mary. You may have had many motives for deciding against me, and for doing what you did. But I now know there was one big motive which I never before fully realized, and of which you perhaps were never conscious.”
“And that?” she asked.
“You did what you did partly because you loved me, and because you have loved me all along. You believed that for you to marry me would injure what you saw as a big public career for me; you thought you were not the right wife for me. As for Jack, you didn’t really care for him—and in the beginning you weren’t concerned in what your action might mean to him. But me—me you didn’t want to hurt in any way.” He repeated himself: “I see that clearly now—even though you did not know it, that was one of the motives that ruled you.”
“I would not dare say that in my own behalf,” she whispered. And then she went on: “But if, after all, I have turned out what you thought me, it is because you believed in me so long—and because your belief in me, and the way you handled me, forced me to become something different.... But it must have been hard for you—very, very hard!”
“It’s been a thousand times worth it all, Mary,” he breathed, “a thousand times worth it all!”
He caught her hand and held it tight beneath his on the steering-wheel—it was as though now they were jointly steering their united lives; and they sped on through the soft, star-blossoming night, in the silence of full understanding, southward toward the great city where so long they had fought each other, and where now at the last they were to begin to build a life together.
THE END
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