Madelaine moved across to Gordon then. She lifted her hands to his shoulders and stood looking up into his war-hardened face.
“Gordon,” she said softly, “you’re doing a big thing. You’ll be happy because you are doing it. I can see it in your eyes already. I know you will make Bernie’s hard life very rich. But I want to say more than that. I want to tell you that I have loved you—loved you from the night you came to my room down in Boston and showed me you had taken stock of yourself and your birthright and were going to play the man. It wasn’t a romantic love, Gordon. It was the love of a sister for a very dear brother. And that love is still yours, Gordon. You may carry it away with you and retain it always. God has been very good to the homeless waif that is myself. He has given me a very dear foster-mother. More than that, he has sent two fine, virile men into my life. And they hold my heart in their powerful hands between them. What more could a girl ask?”
Gordon took both hands and kissed them again. And Madelaine, placed one arm around Gordon’s neck—drew him down—kissed him on the forehead.
The man blindly fumbled in his pocket. He pulled from it a little wine-colored box of plush.
“I want you to keep it, Madelaine. To remember me by, in the years ahead. Aunt Gracia let me have it, and I had the stone put in a slightly different setting. Please wear it—on your right hand—as a sort of personal wedding gift.”
She let him slip the ring on her right third finger.
“I want him to meet you, Gordon,” she said.
They went downstairs and across to the porch door. As she came through, she heard her mother’s voice explaining something to Nathan, who sat with his elbows on his knees, leaned forward, face thoughtful. “—and the war sent their value up scandalously and Madelaine will get almost a million that will require a good business man’s oversight——” Mrs. Theddon stopped abruptly and raised her eyes to her daughter’s crimson face. “Well, dear?” she stammered, as though she had been caught in a misdemeanor.
“I want Nathan and Gordon to meet. He’s here in the drawing-room.”
“Have him out, by all means,” declared Mrs. Theddon, arising.