For answer, Silvia put up her lips and met his in a first kiss. Nothing more was needed.
'I am going to shew you,' he said, after a delicious pause, 'that I can be superior even to my prejudices. I have come to take you to this meeting, and to steel myself, for your sake, to what I dislike as much as ever. I could not bear the thought of you alone and sad. I knew you would be.'
'This shall be the last time I do what you dislike,' she murmured softly.
'Don't promise anything,' he interrupted. 'I leave you absolutely free. We will work together and be, as you said, true friends as well as lovers. Are you happy now?'
The honest tender eyes answered the question for her.
Some months after, Mr Roberts received the following note from his old friend Wilfred Earle:
'Dear Jack—I want you to come and dine with Benedict the married man next Tuesday, and see how happy his "strong-minded woman" makes him. You were right, old fellow! The clever women do make the best wives after all. That was a blessed day for me that I went, under protest, to hear my Silvia "spout in public." The spouting days are over now; but I am not ashamed of anything she has done or said. You may laugh at my inconsistency as much as you like; I can afford to laugh too, as I have won something worth winning. Come and judge for yourself, and see your old friend in Elysium, and then go and do the same thing yourself. I can tell you, my wife knows how to welcome my friends; and I hope you will think she makes her house and mine a pleasant one. Au revoir, Jack; and between ourselves—she does not at all object to smoking.
W. E.'