“If I wanted it!”

“I know you wanted it now, and I am no longer ashamed to have come.  I am glad I came, and if you can still be proud of my love and respect me——­”

“Oh, Grizel, if!”

“Then I have got back my pride and my self-respect again.  I cannot reason about it, but they have come back again.”

It was she who was trying to comfort him by this time, caressing his hair and his hands.  But he would not be appeased at once; it was good for her to have something to do.

“You are sure you are happy again, Grizel?  You are not pretending in order to please me?”

“So happy!”

“But your eyes are still wet.”

“That is because I have hurt you so.  Oh, how happy I should be if I could see you smile again!”

“How I would smile if I saw you looking happy!”

“Then smile at once, sir,” she could say presently, “for see how happy I am looking.”  And as she beamed on him once more he smiled as well as he was able to.  Grizel loved him so much that she actually knew when that face of his was smiling, and soon she was saying gaily to his eyes:  “Oh, silly eyes that won’t sparkle, what is the use of you?” and she pressed her own upon them; and to his mouth she said:  “Mouth that does not know how to laugh—­poor, tragic mouth!” He let her do nearly all the talking.  She sat there crooning over him as if he were her child.

And so the flag was saved.  He begged her to let him tell their little world of his love for her, and especially was he eager to go straight with it to the doctor.  But she would not have this.  “David and Elspeth shall know in good time,” she said, very nobly.  “I am sure they are fond of each other, and they shall know of our happiness on the day when they tell us of their own.”  And until that great day came she was not to look upon herself as engaged to Tommy, and he must never kiss her again until they were engaged.  I think it was a pleasure to her to insist on this.  It was her punishment to herself for ever having doubted Tommy.

* * * * *

PART II

* * * * *

CHAPTER XVIII

THE GIRL SHE HAD BEEN

As they sat amid the smell of rosin on that summer day, she told him, with a glance that said, “Now you will laugh at me,” what had brought her into Caddam Wood.

“I came to rub something out.”

He reflected.  “A memory?”

“Yes.”

“Of me?”

She nodded.

“An unhappy memory?”

“Not to me,” she replied, leaning on him.  “I have no memory of you I would rub out, no, not the unhappiest one, for it was you, and that makes it dear.  All memories, however sad, of loved ones become sweet, don’t they, when we get far enough away from them?”