“It is because you are very noble that any good can come out of this harm,” she went on, with an eloquent tremor in her voice. “I can see that before very long I shall be, as you said, willing—glad—for so great a gift—only always sorry for your sake. I am very grateful now—I cannot tell you how great a thing I think it is—from such a man as you.”
They had both become embarrassed and shy now, and both stood silent to recover their ease. “You leave by this evening’s train?” he asked in a minute.
“Yes.”
“Then this is good-by.”
“For a while.”
They moved together to the door. As they reached it, Will turned and held out his hand, with an attempt at a smile. They stood a few moments with hands clasped. Winifred’s downcast eyes were filling.
“Good-by, Winifred,” he said.
“Good-by,” she answered, faintly. A minute later she had thrown herself sobbing on her bed, and he was walking down the street.
He met Winifred’s lover, coming from the ticket-office—a gentleman high-bred and handsome in every line, a scholar by his appearance, a good man by his eyes, a good companion by his smile. There were all those differences between him and Will that the young man had talked of and Winifred in all sincerity had called nothing; and, moreover, she would never in the world have loved him if there had not been. The girl was an aristocrat after all, when it came to a question not of friendship but love. And Will knew it; love is penetrating enough to divine that much from scanty data. He looked at the stranger with a sort of transferred reverence—what a king of men must he be whom Winifred could crown! And if he did not look at him without a blinding pang, it was, nevertheless, a test of the thoroughness of the night’s work that there was neither bitterness nor aversion in it. Something, that sense of having disarmed pain—not dodged nor outwitted it, but disarmed it forever—must have been in Winkelried’s consciousness as the spears pressed in.