e time he was looking over her head
fixedly, with his mouth open.

"And I was always so sure of you!" were the words that came to him at
last, with a hard little laugh at the end of them.

"Can you think it makes me love you less," she sobbed, "because I love
him, too? Oh, Tommy, I thought you would be so glad!"

He kissed her; he put his hand fondly upon her head.

"I am glad," he said, with emotion. "When that which you want has come
to you, Elspeth, how can I but be glad? But it takes me aback, and if
for a moment I felt forlorn, if, when I should have been rejoicing
only in your happiness, the selfish thought passed through my mind,
'What is to become of me?' I hope--I hope--" Then he sat down and
buried his face in the table.

And he might have been telling her about Grizel! Has the shock stunned
you, Tommy? Elspeth thinks it has been a shock of pain. May we lift
your head to show her your joyous face?

"I am so proud," she was saying, "that at last, after you have done so
much for me, I can do a little thing for you. For it is something to
free you, Tommy. You have always pretended, for my sake, that we could
not do without each other, but we both knew all the time that it was
only I who was unable to do without you. You can't deny it."

He might deny it, but it was true. Ah, Tommy, you bore with her with
infinite patience, but did it never strike you that she kept you to
the earth? If Elspeth could be happy without you! You were sure she
could not, but if she could!--had that thought never made you flap
your wings?

"I often had a pain at my heart," she told him, "which I kept from
you. It was a feeling that your solicitude for me, perhaps, prevented
your caring for any other woman. It seemed terrible and unnatural that
I should be a bar to that. I felt that I was starving you, and not you
only, but an unknown woman as well."

"So long as I had you, Elspeth," he said reproachfully, "was not that
enough?"

"It seemed to be enough," she answered gravely, "but even while I
comforted myself with that, I knew that it should not be enough, and
still I feared that if it was, the blame was mine. Now I am no longer
in the way, and I hope, so ardently, that you will fall in love, like
other people. If you never do, I shall always have the fear that I am
the cause, that you lost the capacity in the days when I let you
devote yourself too much to me."

Oh, blind Elspeth! Now is the time to tell her, Tommy, and