"Well?" said Mr. Fowler, interrogatively.
"Well," said Claud, defiantly, "I am glad to have the chance of speaking to you, Fowler. I will begin with putting a straight question. Are you engaged to—to Miss Allonby?"
"No, lad; that question is soon answered. She will not see me."
"Well, then, I give you fair warning, I am coming down to the Combe. I can bear this suspense no longer."
"Come as soon as you will, and stay as long as you can; but she will not see you. She will see nobody. She seems well, they say; her strength is coming back, she can walk, and eats pretty well; but she is sadly changed, her pretty sister tells me. She does not seem to care to talk. She will sit silent for hours, and they are afraid she does not sleep. She will go nowhere and speak to no one. If you call upon her, she will decline to see you."
"I shall not give her the chance to decline or to consent. I shall insist upon seeing her," said Claud, calmly. "Fowler, some words you said to me that night at the Langham have been with me ever since: 'There comes a time to every man when the only clean and honorable course is to go straight forward.' I have passed beyond that. For me now, the only possible course is to go straight forward. I will see and speak to her, if only to ask a forgiveness from her. I have piled on the sack-cloth and ashes this Lent, Fowler. I have found out at last what I really am; and for a time the knowledge simply crushed me. But now I am beginning to struggle up. I have grown to believe in the truth of the saying that men may rise on stepping-stones of their dead selves to higher things. If—if I could have her for my own, I honestly think I might yet be a useful man. Now you know my intentions, sir, as well as I know them myself. You can't be mad enough to ask such a declared rival down to stay with you."
"Mad or sane, I must have you to stay with me. Can you start to-morrow?"
"With the best heart in the world; but, Fowler, I don't understand you."
"See here, lad. I trust Miss Allonby entirely. She will not have you if she does not love you; and if she does love you, I am willing she should have you, for my life's aim is her happiness, whether she find it in me or in another man. Ah! you are young; no wonder you think me mad. Time was when I should have felt, as you do now, that the thing was a blind necessity, that either she and I must come together, or the world must end for me. In those days there was a woman,"—he halted a moment, then went on serenely, "there was a woman made for me. I was the only man to make her happy; but she chose another. It was then I knew what desolation meant. Now I can feel tenderness but not passion. I can wish for Wynifred's happiness more fervently than I desire my own; I do not feel, as you feel, that her happiness and mine are one and the self-same thing. Yours is the love that should overcome, I am sure of that, now. It is the love that will tear down barriers and uproot obstructions; the only love a man should dare to lay at the feet of a woman like Wynifred Allonby."