“There’s nobody like you—nobody I ever met,” he cried in a whisper, as lovers have done since Adam first wooed Eve. “Could any one have done more for me than you? Your faith rebuilt my life. If I’m ever anything, I owe it to you. And now—the greatest gift of all. Why to me? Why not to Merrick, far more worthy of you?”
In her smile was the world-old wisdom Leonardo has expressed in his Mona Lisa.
“Love doesn’t go by merit, does it? I wonder if Justin isn’t too worthy. He’s perfect in himself—complete. He doesn’t need me.”
“God knows I need you, if that’s a reason,” he said humbly. “But it’s not fair to you.”
“Was it Justin who swam through the flood to save me?” she asked softly, her face aglow.
“He’s doing a much more sensible thing—building a raft to get you ashore.”
“Who wants her lover to do the sensible thing?” She turned to him impulsively, warm, tender, luminous, a rapt young thing caught in a surge of generous emotion. “I’d want mine to do just what you did—come through water or through fire instantly when I needed you. I’d love you now, if I never had before.”
“And if Merrick had come?”
“He couldn’t come. It wouldn’t be Justin to do that—to fling his life away on a thousandth chance. Don’t you see, Tug? He doesn’t tread the mountain-tops—and you do.”
“I see you’re always giving. If I could only wipe the slate out, Betty—begin my life over again to-day,” he said wistfully.