had decided not
to know."

"What do you think of her decision?" asked Lady Ingleby.

"I think it proved her to be a very just-minded woman, and a very unusual
one, if she keeps to it. But it would be rather like a woman, to make a
fine decision such as that during the tension of a supreme moment, and
then indulge in private speculation afterwards."

"Did you hear her reason, Jim? She said she did not wish that a man
should walk this earth, whose hand she could not bring herself to touch
in friendship."

"Poor loyal soul!" said Jim Airth, greatly moved. "Myra, if _I_ got
accidentally done for, as Ingleby was,--should _you_ feel so, for my
sake?"

"No!" cried Myra, passionately. "If I lost _you_, my beloved, I should
never want to touch any other man's hand, in friendship or otherwise, as
long as I lived!"

"Ah," mused Jim Airth. "Then you don't consider Lady Ingleby's reason for
her decision proved a love such as ours?"

Myra laid her beautiful head against his shoulder.

"Jim," she said, brokenly, "I do not feel myself competent to discuss any
other love. One thing only is clear to me;--I never realised what love
meant, until I knew _you_."

A long silence in the honeysuckle arbour.

Then Jim Airth cried almost fiercely to the woman in his arms: "Can you
really think you have been right to keep me waiting, even for a day?"

And she who loved him with a love beyond expression could frame no words
in answer to that question. Thus it came to pass that, in the days to
come, it was there, unanswered; ready to return and beat upon her brain
with merciless reiteration: "Was I right to keep him waiting, even for a
day."

* * * * *

In the hall, beside the marble table, where lay the visitors' book, they
paused to say good-night. From the first, Myra had never allowed him up
the stairs until her door was closed. "If you don't keep the rules I
think it right to make, Jim," she had said, with her little tender smile,
"I shall, in self-defence, engage Miss Murgatroyd as chaperon; and what
sort of a time would you have then?"

So Jim was pledged to remain below until her door had been shut five
minutes. After which he used to tramp up the stairs whistling:

"A long long life, to my sweet wife,
And mates at sea;
And keep our bones from Davy Jones,
Where'er we be.
And may you meet a mate as swe