"I do. Dicky, why shouldn't I say it? Why shouldn't I? Hasn't a woman the right? Hasn't she?"
She was shaking with silent sobs, the tears running down her cheeks. He had not seen her cry like this since little girlhood, when her mother had died, and he, a clumsy lad, had tried to comfort her.
He was faced by a situation so stupendous that for a moment he sat there stunned. Proud little Eve for love of him had made the supreme sacrifice of her pride. Could any man in his maddest moment have imagined a thing like this——!
He bent down to her, and took her hands in his.
"Hush, Eve, hush. I can't bear to see you cry. I'm not the fellow to make you happy, dear."
Her head dropped against his shoulder. The perfumed gold of her hair was against his cheeks. "No one else can make me happy, Dicky."
Then he felt the world whirl about him, and it seemed to him as he answered that his voice came from a long distance.
"If you'll marry me, Eve, I'll stay."
It was the knightly thing to do, and the necessary thing. Yet as they swept on through the night, his mother's face, all the joy struck from it, seemed to stare at him out of the darkness.
