Meg looked into his eyes. "I'll never doubt you, Mike," she said, "if you'll tell me, under these dear stars, which have made you confess your love for me, that there has been no deep feeling on your side, that there is nothing that matters between you."
Mike took her two hands. "On my side, there has been nothing but friendship, I swear it," he said. "I never, never desired anything else. There has been nothing that matters."
"I'm so glad," Meg said. "You're so high, Mike, so awfully high in my love. Your drifting is all a part of it. I love you for all your mad dreams and dear unworldliness, for your struggling and striving for the highest. I should hate to have to believe that you were less high than I imagined."
"But I kissed her, Meg," he said, abruptly. The truth was drawn from him, as his confession of love had been, torn from him by some power outside himself. He hated giving her pain, and it had been scarcely necessary if Margaret had been other than she was.
It had not mattered—yet if truth was beauty and beauty was God, and his religion was that the kingdom of God is within us, how could he hold it back, this deed which, little as it might seem in the eyes of most people, had been for him a thing which did matter?
"You kissed her!" Meg said. Something that was not love was now bursting her throat. Her voice was uncertain. It hurt Michael like a thrust from a sharp knife.
"Yes," he said. "I kissed her, more than once."
"Her lips?" Meg asked.
"Yes, Meg, her lips."
"You kissed her as you have kissed me to-night?"