He turned on her his deep-set eyes, full of tenderness and humor and uncertainty, and shook his head.  “Yes, dear, I do believe that,” he said regretfully.  “I don’t see how I can help believing it.  Why, I hadn’t the faintest idea of going back to settle in Ashley before I met you.  I had taken Uncle Burton’s mill and his bequest of four thousand dollars as a sort of joke.  What could I do with them, without anything else?  And what on earth did I want to do with them?  Nothing!  As far as I had any plans at all, it was to go home, see Father and Mother for a while, get through the legal complications of inheritance, sell the mill and house . . .  I wouldn’t have thought of such a thing as bothering even to go to Ashley to look at them . . . and then take the money and go off somewhere, somewhere different, and far away:  to China maybe.  I was pretty restless in my mind, pretty sure that nothing in our civilization was worth the candle, you know, before you arrived on the scene to put everything in focus.  And if I had done all that, while you were still here in Rome, running up and down your scales, honestly . . .  I know I sound awfully literal . . . but I don’t see how we ever could have met, do you, dear?”

He offered her this, with a look half of apology, half of simple courage.

She considered it and him seriously, studying his face and eyes, listening retrospectively to the accent of his words, and immensely astonished him by suddenly flashing a kiss on his cheek.  “You’re miraculous!” she said.  “You don’t know how it feels; as though I’d been floundering in a marsh, deeper and deeper, and then all at once, when I thought I’d come to know there wasn’t anything in the world but marsh, to come out on beautiful, fine, clean earth, where I feel the very strength of ages under my feet.  You don’t know how good it seems to have a silly, romantic remark like what I said, answered the way you did, telling the truth; how good it feels to be pulled down to what’s what, and to know you can do it and really love me too.”

He had been so startled and moved by her kiss that he had heard her words but vaguely.  “I don’t seem to catch hold of all that.  What’s it all about?”

“It’s all about the fact that I really begin to believe that you will be loyal and tell me the truth,” she told him.

He saw cause for gravity in this, remembering the great moment so shortly back of them, and said with a surprised and hurt accent, “Didn’t you believe me, when I said I would?”

She took up his hand in hers and said rapidly, “Dear Neale, I did believe it, for just a moment, and I can’t believe anything good of anybody for longer than that, not really in my heart of hearts.  And it’s my turn to tell you some truth when I tell you about that unbelief, what I’ve hardly even ever told myself, right out in words.”