“Oh, Tommy, how good you are!”

“I am far from it, Elspeth.”

“There is a serenity about you nowadays,” she said, “that I don’t seem to have noticed before,” and indeed this was true; it was the serenity that comes to those who, having a mortal wound, can no more be troubled by the pinpricks.

“There has been nothing to cause it, has there?” Elspeth asked timidly.

“Only the feeling that I have much to be grateful for,” he replied.  “I have you, Elspeth.”

“And I have you,” she said, “and I want no more.  I could never care for anyone as I care for you, Tommy.”

She was speaking unselfishly; she meant to imply delicately that the doctor’s defection need not make Tommy think her unhappy.  “Are you glad?” she asked.

He said Yes bravely.  Elspeth, he was determined, should never have the distress of knowing that for her sake he was giving up the one great joy which life contains.  He was a grander character than most.  Men have often in the world’s history made a splendid sacrifice for women, but if you turn up the annals you will find that the woman nearly always knew of it.

He told Grizel what Aaron had said and what Elspeth had said.  He could keep nothing from her now; he was done with the world of make-believe for ever.  And it seemed wicked of him to hope, he declared, or to let her hope.  “I ought to give you up, Grizel,” he said, with a groan.

“I won’t let you,” she replied adorably.

“Gemmell has not come near us for a week.  I ask him in, but he avoids the house.”

“I don’t understand it,” Grizel had to admit; “but I think he is fond of her, I do indeed.”

“Even if that were so, I fear she would not accept him.  I know Elspeth so well that I feel I am deceiving you if I say there is any hope.”

“Nevertheless you must say it,” she answered brightly; “you must say it and leave me to think it.  And I do think it.  I believe that Elspeth, despite her timidity and her dependence on you, is like other girls at heart, and not more difficult to win.

“And even if it all comes to nothing,” she told him, a little faintly, “I shall not be unhappy.  You don’t really know me if you think I should love to be married so—­so much as all that.”

“It is you, Grizel,” he replied, “who don’t see that it is myself I am pitying.  It is I who want to be married as much as all that.”

Her eyes shone with a soft light, for of course it was what she wanted him to say.  These two seemed to have changed places.  That people could love each other, and there the end, had been his fond philosophy and her torment.  Now, it was she who argued for it and Tommy who shook his head.

“They can be very, very happy.”

“No,” he said.

“But one of them is.”

“Not the other,” he insisted; and of course it was again what she wanted him to say.

And he was not always despairing.  He tried hard to find a way of bringing David to Elspeth’s feet, and once, at least, the apparently reluctant suitor almost succumbed.  Tommy had met him near Aaron’s house, and invited him to come in and hear Elspeth singing.  “I did not know she sang,” David said, hesitating.