He turned back to her, and saw her eyes, and what he saw made him reach out blindly for her hand—sympathy, tenderness—a womanly brooding tenderness.
“Oh, Evans, Evans,” she said, “I am not going to marry Frederick Towne.”
“Why not?” thickly.
“I don’t love him.”
“Do you love me, Jane?”
She nodded and could not speak. They clung together. He wept and was not ashamed of it.
And standing there, with his head against her breast, Jane knew that she had found the best. Marriage was not a thing of luxury and soft living, of flaming moments of wild emotion. It was a thing of hardness shared, of spirit meeting spirit, of dream matching dream. Jane, that afternoon, had caught her breath as she had come into the darkened hall, and had seen Evans standing between those slender lads. So some day, perhaps, in this old house—his sons!
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE:
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.