mely.

She believed it to be the truth, and he saw that she believed it. He
saw, sadly, clearly, that among all the twistings and deviations of her
predicament, one thing held firm for her, so firm that it had given her
this new faith in herself--her faith in his supreme devotion. And he saw
that he owed it to her. He had given it to her, he had made it her
possession, to trust to as she trusted to the ground under her feet,
ever since they were boy and girl together. Six months ago it would have
been with joy, and with joy only, that he would have received her, and
have received the gift of her bruised, uncertain heart. Six months--why
only a week ago he would have thought that it could only be with joy.

So now he found his voice and he knew that it was nearly his old voice
for her, and he said, in answer to that despairing statement that
wailed for contradiction: 'Oh no, Althea, dear. Oh no, you haven't
wrecked our lives.'

'But you are bound now,' she hardly audibly faltered. 'You have another
life opening before you. You can't come back now.'

'No, Althea,' Franklin repeated, and he stroked her shoulder again. 'I
can come back, if you want me. And you do want me, don't you, dear? You
will let me try to make you happy?'

She put back her head to look at him, her poor face, tear-stained, her
eyes wild with their suffering, and he saw the new fear in them, the
formless fear. 'O Franklin,' she said, and the question was indeed a
strange one to be asked by her of him: 'do you love me?'

And now, pierced by his pity, Franklin could rise to all she needed of
him. The old faith sustained him, too. One didn't love some one for all
one's life like that, to be left quite dispossessed. Many things were
changed, but many still held firm; and though, deep in his heart, sick
with its relinquishment, Helen's words seemed to whisper, 'Some things
can't be joys when they come too late,' he could answer himself as he
had answered her, putting away the irony and scepticism of
disenchantment--'It's wonderful the way joy can grow,' and draw strength
for himself and for his poor Althea from that act of affirmation.

'Why, of course I love you, Althea, dear,' he said. 'How can you ask me
that? I've always loved you, haven't I? You knew I did, didn't you, or
else you wouldn't have sent? You knew I wasn't bound if you were free. I
understand it all.' And smiling at her so that she should forget for
ever that she had had a new fear, h