There was a short silence. Then Judith laid her hand on the little man's shoulder.
"It was—my fault, Uncle Bond," she whispered. "I—failed him. It has happened twice now. Last night was the first time. And tonight—he knew that it was going to happen again. I don't know—how it happened. It ought not to have happened—"
"It had to happen. It is a good thing that it has happened," Uncle Bond said quietly. "It was—the necessary climax. I have been expecting it. And now—it is over—
"It was a risk. It was a great risk. It was the risk," the little man went on, in a low, meditative tone. "But I trusted—him. It seemed to me that he could not fail. He comes of a good stock. The long line of men and women who lived, so that he might live, did not live in vain. Think of their restraint, their self-repression, their self-sacrifice—
"And we have been able to do him a service, a great service, a greater service than he realizes as yet. We have helped him through a difficult, and dangerous, period in his life. And you have shown him—of what stuff he is made. Instincts, and impulses, which, in him, have necessarily been insulated, and sternly suppressed, for years, have been brought into play. He knows now—of what stuff he is made.
"The future will be easier. I was telling him, tonight, that I do not think that we shall see so much of him, in the future. The time is coming when we shall see very little of him, I think. But he will not forget us. He will think of us with gratitude, with deepening gratitude, as the years go by. We shall have a place of our own in his memory. And there will be nothing in his memory, that he, or we, need regret—
"We shall miss him. He has come to fill a large place in all our lives. It has been a strange episode. That he should have wandered, by chance, into our quiet backwater; that we should have become implicated, through him, in great issues—that is strange. But it is only an episode. And it is nearly over now. And we—and you—would not have it otherwise?"
"I would not have it otherwise," Judith whispered.
Then she drew in her breath, sharply, as if in pain.
"But I have so much, and he has so little," she said.