“That is how I felt,” she whispered.

“You!” Tommy cried, in excellent amazement.

“What else could have made me come?”

“I thought it was pity that had brought you—­pity for me, Grizel.  I thought you had perhaps come back to be angry with me—­”

“How could I be!” she cried.

“How could you help it, rather?” said he.  “I was cruel, Grizel; I spoke like a fool as well as like a dastard.  But it was only anxiety for Elspeth that made me do it.  Dear one, be angry 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.