with me as often as
you choose, and whether I deserve it or not; but don't go away from
me; never send me from you again. Anything but that."

It was how she had felt again, and her hold on him tightened with
sudden joy. So well he knew what that grip meant! He did not tell her
that he had not loved her fully until now. He would have liked to tell
her how true love had been born in him as he saw her stealing back to
him, but it was surely best for her not to know that any
transformation had been needed. "I don't say that I love you more now
than ever before," he said carefully, "but one thing I do know: that I
never admired you quite so much."

She looked up in surprise.

"I mean your character," he said determinedly. "I have always known
how strong and noble it was, but I never quite thought you could do
anything so beautiful as this."

"Beautiful!" She could only echo the word.

"Many women, even of the best," he told her, "would have resorted to
little feminine ways of humbling such a blunderer as I have been: they
would have spurned him for weeks; made him come to them on his knees;
perhaps have thought that his brutality of a moment outweighed all his
love. When I saw you coming to meet me half-way--oh, Grizel, tell me
that you were doing that?"

"Yes, yes, yes!" she answered eagerly, so that she might not detain
him a moment.

"When I saw you I realized that you were willing to forgive me; that
you were coming to say so; that no thought of lowering me first was in
your mind; that yours was a love above the littleness of ordinary
people: and the adorableness of it filled me with a glorious joy; I
saw in that moment what woman in her highest development is capable
of, and that the noblest is the most womanly."

She said "Womanly?" with a little cry. It had always been such a sweet
word to her, and she thought it could never be hers again!

"It is by watching you," he replied, "that I know the meaning of the
word. I thought I knew long ago, but every day you give it a nobler
meaning."

If she could have believed it! For a second or two she tried to
believe it, and then she shook her head.

"How dear of you to think that of me!" she answered. She looked up at
him with exquisite approval in her eyes. She had always felt that men
should have high ideas about women.

"But it was not to save you pain that I came back," she said bravely.
There was something pathetic in the way the truth had always to come