“I’m sorry that there were so few things that we could bring,” he said slowly. “A great deal was lost in the wreck, and we had to sacrifice more still in our journey across the ice. There came a time when we couldn’t carry a load—we could scarcely carry ourselves.”
Diane folded the pictures carefully away before she replied.
“What you say makes me all the more grateful for these!”
He raised his head at that, and their eyes met. The sympathy, the kindling kindness of her glance went to his heart.
“You don’t ask me about it all, and yet I’m sure you want to know.”
“I understood. I was deeply touched by what you said at dinner. I know you can’t talk of it yet—I don’t ask it.”
“I think I could talk to you; but perhaps I had better wait until another time.” Faunce paused; then, rising from his seat, he came over and stood beside her, resting his elbow on the mantel, with his face in the shadow, as hers had been. “I want you to feel that the end was painless. It always is, you know, in those awful solitudes. You knew Overton; you must know that he was a hero—to the end.”
She, too, rose involuntarily from her seat and faced him. Again her pale face, and her slight figure in its black draperies, recalled to his mind the charm and buoyant grace of that wonderful picture of long ago. It was, indeed, this charm of hers, so subtle and so poignant, that drew him on deeper and deeper into the shoals.
“I loved him,” Faunce continued, with a painful effort at self-control. “No one in the world could have suffered more bitterly than I at his loss. I don’t want you to feel that I purposely tried to take his place in this great achievement. I only fell heir to his glory.”
She was deeply touched. Again, even in the midst of her tender remembrance of Overton, this man, who had suffered with him and dared with him, laid hold of her imagination. She raised her beautiful eyes to Faunce’s face, holding out her hand in an involuntary gesture of friendship and good-will.