"I shall have to tell you more, some day. If I do, it will be more than I would do for anybody else alive—the ultimate sacrifice of pride."
He rose and stood gazing out across the mist at a far star above it, glimmering with dimmed brilliancy all alone.
"It couldn't have been," he said, half to himself. "I always knew it. Not that the thought of you ever crossed my mind. I knew it would come somehow. It simply couldn't be."
He turned to Cleland with a sudden laugh that sounded light and natural:
"This is to be no tragedy. It will disentangle itself easily and simply. I am very sure that she is in love with you. Tell her what I have said to you.... And—good night, old chap."
CHAPTER XXX
Stephanie and Helen arrived, bringing a mountain of baggage and the studio cat—an animal evidently unacquainted with the larger freedom of outdoors, and having no cosmic urge, for when deposited upon the lawn it fled distracted, and remained all day upon a heap of coal in the cellar, glaring immovably upon blandishment.
"Oh!" cried Stephanie, standing on the lawn and quite enchanted by the old place. "It is simply too lovely! It's like a charming doll's house—it's so much smaller than I remember it! Helen, did you ever see such trees! And isn't the garden a dear! Listen to the noise of the river! Did you ever hear anything as refreshing as that endless rippling? Where is Oswald, Jim?"
"He went back to town this morning."
"How mean of him!"