“If you had said a word less,” declared Ralph, seating himself at her side on the greensward, “or if you had varnished it over with politeness, then you would probably have failed to produce any effect and I should not have been burdened with that heavy debt of gratitude which I now owe you.  I was a pretty thick-skinned animal in those days, Bertha.  You said the right word at the right moment; you gave me a bold and a good piece of advice, which my own ingenuity would never have suggested to me.  I will not thank you, because, in so grave a case as this, spoken thanks sound like a mere mockery.  Whatever I am, Bertha, and whatever I may hope to be, I owe it all to that hour.”

She listened with rapture to the manly assurance of his voice; her eyes dwelt with unspeakable joy upon his strong, bronzed features, his full thick blond beard, and the vigorous proportions of his frame.  Many and many a time during his absence had she wondered how he would look if he ever came back, and with that minute conscientiousness which, as it were, pervaded her whole character, she had held herself responsible before God for his fate, prayed for him, and trembled lest evil powers should gain the ascendency over his soul.

On their way to the house they talked together of many things, but in a guarded, cautious fashion, and without the cheerful abandonment of former years.  They both, as it were, groped their way carefully in each other’s minds, and each vaguely felt that there was something in the other’s thought which it was not well to touch unbidden.  Bertha saw that all her fears for him had been groundless, and his very appearance lifted the whole weight of responsibility from her breast; and still, did she rejoice at her deliverance from her burden?  Ah, no; in this moment she knew that that which she had foolishly cherished as the best and noblest part of herself had been but a selfish need of her own heart.  She feared that she had only taken that interest in him which one feels in a thing of one’s own making, and now, when she saw that he had risen quite above her; that he was free and strong, and could have no more need of her, she had, instead of generous pleasure at his success, but a painful sense of emptiness, as if something very dear had been taken from her.

Ralph, too, was loth to analyze the impression his old love made upon him.  His feelings were of so complex a nature, he was anxious to keep his more magnanimous impulses active, and he strove hard to convince himself that she was still the same to him as she had been before they had ever parted.  But, alas! though the heart be warm and generous, the eye is a merciless critic.  And the man who had moved on the wide arena of the world, whose mind had housed the large thoughts of this century, and expanded with its invigorating breath—­was he to blame because he had unconsciously outgrown his old provincial self, and could no more judge by its standards?