"Ted?" she cried.
"Wait," he answered, rummaging in a drawer of his desk, with his back toward her. And his voice sounded queer—almost as if it were choked with tears. "Wait, Sheila."
He rose, directly, and walked toward her, and his face was queer, too, unsteady with some rarely deep emotion. Thus he had looked when he first bent over her after Eric's birth. That flashed through Sheila's mind, touched her to sudden faith in his being, now, what she prayed to have him. Then she saw that in his hand he had, not Eric's story, but a bulky package of yellowed manuscripts, tied clumsily with a faded ribbon. In such fashion a romantic man might have tied love letters. But Ted was not romantic, and, never having been separated from him at any time since their marriage, she had written him no letters. Besides, these papers were large, business-like sheets. She stared at them curiously. What had they to do with Eric and Eric's future?
But to Ted they had their significance. He carefully untied the dingy ribbon and spread the loosened pages on the table before her—and she noticed that his fingers were shaking.
"Look," he said, in that queer, blurred voice.
She picked up one of the discolored pages—and her own writing confronted her; for the page was from the unfinished story she had been working on when Eric was taken ill with scarlet fever—the story that, in obedience to her vow, she had put aside, still uncompleted.
"Why, Ted—Ted—!" But even then she did not understand.
"I found them," he explained, furtively stroking the shabby sheets, but attempting a bluff and off-hand tone, "I found them—Oh, years ago!—just stuck off in a cupboard like trash that nobody wanted any more. And so—because I did want them—I brought them down here."
"You wanted them?" Sheila gasped. "But, Ted——"
And then he had her in his arms, and his eyes—full of the tears he had tried to repress—were gazing down into hers!