He listened carefully, even eagerly.
‘You make a good case,’ he said, with a slight smile. ‘I will take time. Perhaps you are right. The light will come. Surely it will come. But,’ and here he sprang up and stretched his arms to full length above his head, ‘I am not sorry; whatever comes I am not sorry. It is great to have her love, but greater to love her as I do. Thank God! nothing can take that away. I am willing, glad to suffer for the joy of loving her.’
Next morning, before I was awake, he was gone, leaving a note for me:—
‘MY DEAR CONNOR,—I am due at the Landing. When I see you again I think my way will be clear. Now all is dark. At times I am a coward, and often, as you sometimes kindly inform me, an ass; but I hope I may never become a mule.
I am willing to be led, or want to be, at any rate. I must do the best—not second best—for her, for me. The best only is God’s will. What else would you have? Be good to her these days, dear old fellow.—Yours, CRAIG.’
How often those words have braced me he will never know, but I am a better man for them: ‘The best only is God’s will. What else would you have?’ I resolved I would rage and fret no more, and that I would worry Mrs. Mavor with no more argument or expostulation, but, as my friend had asked, ‘Be good to her.’
CHAPTER XII
LOVE IS NOT ALL
Those days when we were waiting Craig’s return we spent in the woods or on the mountain sides, or down in the canyon beside the stream that danced down to meet the Black Rock river, I talking and sketching and reading, and she listening and dreaming, with often a happy smile upon her face. But there were moments when a cloud of shuddering fear would sweep the smile away, and then I would talk of Craig till the smile came back again.