She still waited, and what she expected came:—
"He asked me to go with him,—promised me charge of one of the dams, my own work,—it is the biggest thing that ever came my way."
And then the word fell from her almost without her will:—
"You must go! Must go!"
"Yes," he mused on; "I thought so. There was a time when it would have made me crazy, such a chance…. It's odd after all these years, when I thought I was dead—"
"Don't say dead!"
"Well, rutted deep in the mire, then,—that this should happen."
She had said "go," with all the truth of her nature. It was the thing for him to do. But she did not have the strength to say another word. In the moment she had seen with blinding clearness all that this man meant in her little firmament. 'This was a Man!' She knew him. She loved him! yes, she loved him, thank God! And now he must go out of her life as suddenly as he had come into it,—must leave her alone, stranded as before in the dark.
"It isn't so easy to decide," Falkner continued. "There isn't much money in it,—not for the under men, you know."
"What difference does that make!" she flashed.