The tides of emotion rushed over him and flooded his face into a shining-eyed passion nakedly unashamed and beautiful.  And I had thought him casual, carelessly accepting a risk!

“Parson,” he wondered, “didn’t you know?  No, I suppose it wouldn’t occur to anybody that a man of my sort should love a girl of hers.  But I do.  I think I did the first time I ever laid eyes on her, and she a girl-kid in a red jacket, with curls about her shoulders and a face like a little new rose in the morning.  Remember her eyes, parson, how blue they were?  And how she looked at me, so friendly—­me, mind you, as I was!  And she handed me a Catocala moth, and she gave me Kerry.  ‘You’re such a good man, Mr. Flint!’ says she, and by God, she meant it!  Little Mary Virginia!  And she got fast hold of something in me that was never anybody’s but hers, that couldn’t ever belong to anybody but her, no, not if I lived for a thousand years and had the pick of the earth.

“It wasn’t until she came back, though, that I knew I belonged to her who could never belong to me.  If I was dead at one end of the world and she dead at the other, we couldn’t be any farther apart than life has put us two who can see and speak to each other every day!”

“And yet—­” he looked at me now and laughed boyishly, “and yet it isn’t for Mayne, that she loves, it isn’t for you, nor Eustis, nor any man but me alone to help her, by being just what I am and what I have been!  Risks?  Fail her? I? I couldn’t fail her.  I’ll get those letters for her to-night, if Hunter has hidden them in the beam of his eye!” He turned to me with a sudden white glare of ferocity that appalled me.  “I could kill him with my hands,” said he, with a quiet cold deadliness to chill one’s marrow, “and Inglesby after him, for what they’ve made her endure!  When I think of to-night—­that brute daring to touch her with his swine’s mouth—­I—­I—­”

His face was convulsed; but after a moment’s fierce struggle the disciplined spirit conquered.

“No, there’s been enough trouble for her without that, so they’re safe from me, the both of them.  I wouldn’t do anything to imperil her happiness to save my own life.  She was born to be happy—­and she’s going to have her chance. I’ll see to that, Mary Virginia!”

The man seemed to grow, to expand, to tower giant-like before me.  Next to the white heat of this lava-flow of pure feeling, all other loves lavished upon Mary Virginia during her fortunate life seemed dwarfed and petty.  Beside it Inglesby’s furious desire shrunk into a loathsome thing, small and crawling; and my own affection was only an old priest’s; and even the strong and faithful love of Laurence appeared pale and boyish in the light of this majestic passion which gave all and in return asked only the right to serve and to save.

“Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm; for love is strong as death ...