She nodded.  “You mean you want me to let you off?” she asked.  “You must tell me what you mean.”  And as he did not answer instantly, “Because I think I have some little claim upon you,” she said, with a pleasant smile.

“I am as pitiful a puzzle to myself as I can be to you,” he replied.  “All I know is that I don’t want to marry anyone.  And yet I am sure I could die for you, Grizel.”

It was quite true.  A burning house and Grizel among the flames, and he would have been the first on the ladder.  But there is no such luck for you, Tommy.

“You are free,” was what she said.  “Don’t look so tragic,” she added, again with the pleasant smile.  “It must be very distressing to you, but—­you will soon fly again.”  Her lips twitched tremulously.  “I can’t fly,” she said.

She took the ring from her neck.  She took it off its ribbon.

“I brought it,” she said, “to let you put it on my finger.  I thought you would want to do that,” she said.

“Grizel,” he cried, “can we not be as we have been?”

“No,” she answered.

“It would all come right, Grizel.  I am sure it would.  I don’t know why I am as I am; but I shall try to change myself.  You have borne with me since we were children.  Won’t you bear with me for a little longer?”

She shook her head, but did not trust herself to speak.

“I have lost you,” he said, and she nodded.

“Then I am lost indeed!” said he, and he knew it, too; but with a gesture of the hand she begged him not to say that.

“Without your love to help me——­” he began.

“You shall always have that,” she told him with shining eyes, “always, always.”  And what could he do but look at her with the wonder and the awe that come to every man who, for one moment in his life, knows a woman well?

“You can love me still, Grizel!” His voice was shaky.

“Just the same,” she answered, and I suppose he looked uplifted.  “But you should be sorry,” she said gravely, and it was then that Elspeth came back.  She had not much exceeded her two minutes.

It was always terrible to Tommy not to have the feelings of a hero.  At that moment he could not endure it.  In a splendid burst of self-sacrifice he suddenly startled both Grizel and himself by crying, “Elspeth, I love Grizel, and I have just asked her to be my wife.”

Yes, the nobility of it amazed himself, but bewitched him, too, and he turned gloriously to Grizel, never doubting but that she would have him still.

He need not have spoken so impulsively, nor looked so grand.  She swayed for an instant and then was erect again.  “You must forgive me, Elspeth,” she said, “but I have refused him”; and that was the biggest surprise Tommy ever got in his life.

“You don’t care for him!” Elspeth blurted out.

“Not in the way he cares for me,” Grizel replied quietly, and when Elspeth would have said more she begged her to desist.  “The only thing for me to do now, Elspeth,” she said, smiling, “is to run away, but I want you first to accept a little wedding-gift from me.  I wish you and David so much happiness; you won’t refuse it, will you?”