For Edna had swished across the room, and was making for the hall.
“I'm going to the drawing-room,” she said, airily, “to see the sleighs go by.”
In another second, the door slammed, and Turl was alone with Florence. He took a hesitating step toward her.
“It's useless,” she said, raising her hand as a barrier between them. “I can't think of you as the same. I can't see him in you. I should have to do that before I could offer you his place. All that I can love now is the memory of him.”
“Listen,” said Turl, without moving. “I have thought it over. For your sake, I will be the man I was. It's true, I can't restore the old face; but the old outlook on life, the old habits, the old pensiveness, will bring back the old expression. I will resume the old name, the old set of memories, the old sense of personality. I said last night that a resumption of the old self could be only mental, and incomplete even so. But when I said that, I had not surrendered. The mental return can be complete, and must reveal itself more or less on the surface. And the old love,—surely where the feeling is the same, its outer showing can't be utterly new and strange.”
He spoke with a more pleading and reverent note than he had yet used since the revelation. A moist shine came into her eyes.
“Murray—it is you!” she whispered.
“Ah!—sweetheart!” His smile of the utmost tenderness seemed more of a kind with sadness than with pleasure. It was the smile of a man deeply sensible of sorrow—of Murray Davenport,—not that of one versed in good fortune alone—not that which a potent imagination had made habitual to Francis Turl.
She gave herself to his arms, and for a time neither spoke. It was she who broke the silence, looking up with tearful but smiling eyes:
“You shall not abandon your design. It's too marvellous, too successful; it has been too dear to you for that.”