“Do you know what I have sometimes thought about that, Laura,” he said, “it is that I all along, from first to last, have known your heart better than you knew it for all your desperate certainty.”

“I never knew it,” she responded; “I do not know it now.”

“And yet I think I do,” he answered.

She shook her head.  “It is no longer a mystery—­there is only light in it to-day.”

“I never thought you loved Kemper,” he went on.  “What you built your dream upon was an imaginary image that wore his shape.  In my heart, even when I stood aside—­when I was forced to stand aside because of other claims upon me—­I think I was sure all the time that your love was meant for me at last.”

“For you?  Oh, no, not now,” she answered.

“It’s a bold way of saying it, I suppose,” he pursued, “here I am neither rich nor successful as the world counts these things—­in debt probably for several years to come, and with not so much as an athletic lustre to my name.  It’s not a cheerful picture I’m drawing, but because there’s a struggle in it I am not afraid to ask you to come and share it.  I wonder if you know how I have loved you, Laura.”

“I have known since—­since that night,” she replied.

“The one argument I have to offer,” he said, smiling, “is that in spite of the unpromising outlook, I happen to be the only man on earth who could make you happy.”

“You might have been once,” she responded.

“And if once, why not now?  Is not forever as good as yesterday?”

“Do you know why?” she answered, turning upon him in sudden passion.  “You think I am brave and yet I am afraid—­afraid, though I won’t admit it, every minute that I live.  I walk the streets in terror of a memory.”

“But I do not,” he answered quietly.  “Do you doubt my power to keep what I have won—­my dearest?”

At the word the colour rose to her cheek, but as they reached Gerty’s door, she stopped and put her hand into the one which he held out.

“Like everything else it has come too late,” she said.

He shook his head, and then pressing her hand, let it fall.

“I can be patient a little longer,” he responded before he turned away.

His words were still in her thoughts when she entered the house; and as she went quickly upstairs to Gerty’s sitting-room, she wondered what counsel of indecision she would content herself with at last?  Then as she crossed the threshold into the warm firelight, she discovered that Gerty was absent and that Arnold Kemper was standing upon the hearth rug.

As he recognised her he came forward, smiling, and held out his hand.

“So we’ve met again, after all, Laura,” he remarked, without embarrassment.

At the sound of his voice there had come a single high throb of her heart and immediately afterward she was aware of an exultation which showed in the uplifting of her head and in her shining eyes—­for as she looked into his face she measured for the first time the distance which divided her dream from her awakening.