“You used to know me too well, Grizel, to speak of my beautiful nature,” he said humbly.

“I did think you vain,” she replied.  “How odd to remember that!”

“But I was, and am.”

“I love to hear you proving you are not,” said she, beaming upon him.  “Do you think,” she asked, with a sudden change of manner to the childish, like one trying to coax a compliment out of him, “that I have improved at all during those last days?  I think I am not quite such a horrid girl as I used to be; and if I am not, I owe it to you.  I am so glad to owe it to you.”  She told him that she was trying to make herself a tiny bit more like him by studying his book.  “It is not exactly the things you say of women that help me, for though they are lovely I am not sure that they are quite true.  I almost hope they are not true; for if they are, then I am not even an average woman.”  She buried her face in his coat.  “You say women are naturally purer than men, but I don’t know.  Perhaps we are more cunning only.  Perhaps it is not even a thing to wish; for if we were, it would mean that we are good because there is less evil in us to fight against.  Dear, forgive me for saying that; it may be all wrong; but I think it is what nearly all women feel in their hearts, though they keep it locked up till they die.  I don’t even want you to believe me.  You think otherwise of us, and it is so sweet of you that we try to be better than we are—­to undeceive you would hurt so.  It is not the book that makes me a better woman—­it is the man I see behind it.”

He was too much moved to be able to reply—­too much humbled.  He vowed to himself that, whether he could love or not, he would be a good husband to this dear woman.

“Ah, Grizel,” he declared, by and by, “what a delicious book you are, and how I wish I had written you!  With every word you say, something within me is shouting, ‘Am I not a wonder!’ I warned you it would be so as soon as I felt that I had done anything really big, and I have.  I have somehow made you love me.  Ladies and gentlemen,” he exclaimed, addressing the river and the trees and the roses, “I have somehow made her love me!  Am I not a wonder?”

Grizel clapped her hands gaily; she was merry again.  She could always be what Tommy wanted her to be.  “Ladies and gentlemen,” she cried, “how could I help it?”

David had been coming back for his fly-book, and though he did not hear their words, he saw a light in Grizel’s face that suddenly set him thinking.  For the rest of the day he paid little attention to Elspeth; some of his answers showed her that he was not even listening to her.

CHAPTER XVI

“How could you hurt your Grizel so!”