"Little friend—are you very happy?" he whispered.
"Happier than I have ever been in all my life," she replied.
"Long ago, Bessie (or it seems long ago), in Arcadia Street we were friends—in that poor old garden that was never a garden at all. I'm a very lonely man, Bessie, and it seems to me to-night that I want my friend."
"Yes?" She looked up into his eyes; and seemed insensibly, in the dusk of the garden, to creep nearer to him.
"I want you, Bessie; there was never a woman in this world that was like you; you've stolen your way into my heart somehow. Bessie—if to-night I asked you to leave all this, and for love's sake to come away with me—out into the big world—what would you say?"
"I could only say what my heart is saying now," she whispered. "I should say—yes."
"Would you? Are you sure?" She was warm and tender and fluttering in his arms. "Are you sure?"
"Yes—because I love you," she breathed.
And so she tied again that strange tangled knot he had tried so hard to cut.