“If you despise me for telling you, let me know at once. It would be better.”
“God forbid!” he said in a low voice. “I shall never apply to you the conventional canons of misjudgment. I take what you have said to me as a sacred trust, and thank you from my heart for thinking well enough of me to give me your confidence. You must never ask me such a question again, Clytie, for it would wound me.”
“I believe you, Kent,” she said, raising her eyes to his in her frank manner. “And I was wrong to say you might have helped me, for you can now. And you will?”
“With my last breath,” said Kent simply. “It has been the torturing regret of the last eighteen months that, much as I wished, I could never do a hand's turn for you.”
“But what can I do for you in repayment, my poor Kent?”
“Be your own bright, eager self again. Throw yourself into your painting, and the result I will take as my reward. It will be my influence gleaming through your genius, and it will be sweet to me. Oh, Clytie! you are wrong. A life is seldom so wrecked that it cannot be reconstructed, for that implies the utter loss of faith. A grain of faith in anything can move mountains; if one hasn't it, then it is time to put an end to life altogether, it becomes one's duty not to live.”
“I came within an ace of that at the beginning of the year,” said Clytie, with a sad retrospective smile. “Some time I may tell you why. I thought of dying, but then it seemed cowardly. Perhaps it was I had more curiosity to go on seeing how the world went on than I was aware of. And now, Kent, you have put things in a new light before me, and how can I thank you for all your goodness?”
“I have told you,” he replied, with a smile.