Murgatroyd looked at her with admiration. Never before had her eyes seemed to him so blue and so lovely.
"There's one thing—one thing that I didn't tell Challoner and his wife," he said, lowering his voice almost to a whisper. "Can you guess what that something was that always made me keep my hands off those iron boxes?"
Shirley lifted her eyes to his in quick understanding.
"It was my love for the woman who wanted me to be great," he went on in a voice so shaken with emotion, that she scarcely recognised it as belonging to him. "That was the motive that beat down all others."
"And will you forgive the foolish lips that told you to go wrong?"
For answer he held out his arms to her and she came to them. Then he stooped down, and catching her face between his hands, raised it slowly, and kissed the lips tenderly, murmuring lovingly:—
"Her soul would not let me go wrong."
After a moment Shirley slowly drew herself out of his arms and placing a hand on each of his shoulders, asked laughingly, looking deep into his eyes:—
"And we'll go to Washington?"
"Yes, dear," he smiled back. "We're going to Washington—to freeze and starve together on that back street—Yes, my revenge is now complete."