He was breathing rather hard, and his words were tripping.  Managing his voice ill, the tones of it ran away from bass to shrill treble.  She saw it all at a glance, and realised that Martin had been blundering on, in pure ignorance and pure love, all these weary weeks.  She sat down silently and her mind moved like light along the wide gamut of fifty emotions in a second.  Anger and sorrow strove together,—­anger with Clem and his callous, cynic silence, sorrow for the panting wretch before her.  Chris opened her mouth to speak, then realised where her flying thoughts had taken her and that, as yet, Martin Grimbal had said nothing.  Her unmaidenly attitude and the sudden reflection that she was about to refuse one before he had asked her, awoke a hysteric inclination to laugh, then a longing to cry.  But all the anxious-visaged man before her noted was a blush that waved like auroral light from the girl’s neck to her cheek, from her cheek to her forehead.  That he saw, and thought it was love, and thanked the Lord in his clumsy fashion aloud.

“God be praised!  I do think you guess—­I do think you guess!  But oh, my dear, my dear, you don’t know what ’s in my heart for you.  My little pearl of a Chris, can you care for such a bear of a man?  Can you let me labour all my life long to make your days good to you?  I love you so—­I do.  I never thought when the moment came I should find tongue to speak it, but I have; and now I could say it fifty thousand times.  I’d just be proud to tie your shoe-string, Chris, my dear, and be your old slave and—­Chris! my Chris!  I’ve hurt you; I’ve made you cry!  Was I—­was I all wrong?  Don’t, don’t—­I’ll go—­Oh, my darling one, God knows I wouldn’t—­”

He broke off blankly and stood half sorrowful, half joyous.  He knew he had no right as yet to go to the comfort of the girl now sobbing beside him, but hope was not dead.  And Chris, overcome by this outpouring of love, now suffered very deep sorrow, while she turned away from him and hid her face and wept.  The poor distracted fool still failed to guess the truth, for he knew tint tears are the outcome of happiness as well as misery.  He waited, open-mouthed, he murmured something—­God knows what—­then he went close and thought to touch her waist, but feared and laid his hand gently on her shoulder.

“Don’t ’e!” she said; and he began to understand and to struggle with himself to lessen her difficulty.

“Forgive me—­forgive me if you can, Chris. Was I all wrong?  Then I ought to have known better—­but even an old stick like me—­before you, Chris. Somehow I—­but don’t cry.  I wouldn’t have brought the tears to your eyes for all the world—­dense idiot I am—­”

“No, no, no; no such thing ’t all, Martin.  ’Tis I was cruel not to see you didn’t knaw.  You’ve been treated ill, an’ I’m cryin’ that such a gude—­gude, braave, big-hearted man as you, should be brought to this for a fule of a gal like me.  I ban’t worthy a handshake from ’e, or a kind word.  An’—­an’—­Clem Hicks—­Clem be tokened to me these two year an’ more.  He’m the best man in the world; an’ I hate un for not tellin’ ’e—­an’—­an’—­”