“To have gone through all the world,” he said, brokenly, “and then to find the Woman, when it is too late. Forever too late.” He turned toward her. “You know it, don't you? That you are my woman?”
“I know it,” she answered, steadily. “But I know, too—”
“Let me say it just once. Then never again. I'll bury it, but you will know it is there. You are my woman. I would go through all of life alone to find you at the end. And if I could look forward, dear, to going through the rest of it with you beside me, so I could touch you, like this—”
“I know.”
“If I could only protect you, and shield you—oh, how tenderly I could care for you, my dear, my dear!”
The strength passed to him, then. Audrey had a clear picture of what life with him might mean, of his protection, his tenderness. She had never known it. Suddenly every bit of her called out for his care, his quiet strength.
“Don't make me sorry for myself.” There were tears in her eyes. “Will you kiss me, Clay? We might have that to remember.”
But they were not to have even that, for the taxicab drew up before her hotel. It was one of the absurd anti-climaxes of life that they should part with a hand-clasp and her formal “Thank you for a lovely evening.”
Audrey was the better actor of the two. She went in as casually as though she had not put the only happiness of her life away from her. But Clayton Spencer stood on the pavement, watching her in, and all the tragedy of the empty years ahead was in his eyes.