She turned on him with the first sparkle of humor he had ever seen her display. "Why don't you marry Mrs. Falconer?"
He didn't start; indeed, the idea had such a familiar sound it would have been hard to frighten him with it from any corner.
"I thought you didn't believe in divorces?"
"Oh, but you'd make a wonderful husband!"
He laughed. "No one has ever thought so—la preuve....?"
With great frankness in her gesture and a great—he was quick to see it—a great affection—she put out her hand to him and said: "Oh, yes, you'd make a wonderful companion, and you've been a wonderful friend. If anything good comes to me now, I shall in great measure owe it to you."
He protested: "You owe me nothing, nothing."
There were tears in her eyes as she said: "But I want to, I like to, and I do. I don't know," she went on, "that I might not have been reconciled ultimately to my husband, but I feel quite sure it would only have been the basting up of the seam—it would have ripped away again. Did you ever—" she challenged him with still a little sparkle of humor, "hear of a thing called a change of heart?"
"Yes, at Methodist meetings."
She said gravely: "That's not what I mean. But whatever has happened it's only been since you told me things."