“I’ve just been—myself!” the girl responded huskily.
“Yourself! Yes! Thank God for that! Yourself! Madge, does a woman ever realize what she can mean to a man sometimes—who loves her because she has given him a goal and a promise—of still finer things to be—and faith—the essence of things hoped for, but not seen?”
“I’ll tell you the truth, Gordon. Yes, there are moments when I’m miserable—terribly miserable—and not because of my clouded parentage, either. Sometimes I don’t think I quite know what it is. And yet—and yet—at others——”
“Madge, you’ve never been really in love, have you—away down deep inside—so deep that you could give that loved one up, if need be, to insure that loved one’s happiness?”
“No, Gordon, I don’t believe I have.”
“That’s strange, Madge. It’s extraordinary for a woman to reach twenty-seven and never have known a love affair—a real one. And yet in your case, I don’t know that it’s so extraordinary, after all. You’re so different in many ways——”
He stopped abruptly at the mask of pain which slipped over the girl’s cameo features. “So different!” Always she had heard that “so different.” And never once had she ever wanted to be different, not realizing how beautifully Gordon meant it, what a compliment he was trying to pay her, entirely aside from any question of policy or to abet his own suit.
“Please don’t say I’m different, Gordon,” she pleaded. “It hurts—terribly!”
“But you are different, you know. Not queer or eccentric, I don’t mean. You’re so much more elegant and delicate—oh, tosh! I don’t mean to sound silly, or indulge in the callow ravings of a school kid. But—oh, Madge, the man who gets you will get a gift direct from the fairies, indeed!” He waited a moment and then added softly, “And, God!—how I’d appreciate being that man!”
Tumultuous emotions swept and swayed the girl. She studied the toe of her satin house slipper. That feeling of helplessness came over her again—the sensation of drifting, drifting—on and on—into Gordon Ruggles’s arms at last—his wife! Well, and what of it? He was proving himself a man and he loved her. There was not a doubt about that. He loved her.