“I shall never forgive myself, Glory, though Heaven itself forgives me!”
“If God makes us love each other in spite of every barrier that divides us——”
“I shall never know another happy hour in this life. Glory—never!”
“Then why should we struggle? It is our fate and we can not conquer it. You can't give up your life, John, and I can't give up mine; but our hearts are one.”
Her voice sang like music in his ears, and something in his aching heart was saying: “What are the laws we make for ourselves compared to the laws God makes for us?” Suddenly he felt something warm. It was Glory's breath on his hand. A fragrance like incense seemed to envelop him. He gasped as if suffocating, and sat down on the sofa.
“You are wrong, dear, if you think I care for the man you speak of. He has been very good to me and helped me in my career, but he is nothing to me—nothing whatever—But we are such old friends, John? It seems impossible to remember a time when we were not old chums, you and I! Sometimes I dream of those dear old days in the 'lil oilan'! Aw, they were ter'ble—just ter'ble! Do you remember the boat—the Gloria—do you remember her?” (He clinched his hands as though to hold on to his purpose, but it was slipping through his fingers like sand.) “What times they were! Coming round the castle of a summer evening when the bay and the sky were like two sheets of silvered glass looking into each other, and you and I singing 'John Peel'” (in a quavering voice she sang a bar or two): “'D'ye ken John Peel with his coat so gay? D'ye ken John Peel'—-Do you remember it, John?”
She was sobbing and laughing by turns. It was her old self, and the cruel years seemed to roll back. But still he struggled. “What is the love of the body to the love of the soul?” he told himself.
“You wore flannels then, and I was in a white jersey—like this, see,” and she snatched up from the mantelpiece the photograph he had been looking at. “I got up my first act in imitation of it, and sometimes in the middle of a scene—such a jolly scene, too—my mind goes back to that sweet old time and I burst out crying.”
He pushed the photograph away. “Why do you remind me of those days?” he said. “Is it only to make me realize the change in you?” But even at that moment the wonderful eyes pierced him through and through.
“Am I so much changed, John? Am I? No, no, dear! It is only my hair done differently. See, see!” and with trembling fingers she tore her hair from its knot. It fell in clusters over her shoulders and about her face. He wanted to lay his hand on it, and he turned to her and then turned away, fighting with himself as with an enemy.