I needed to learn
once more some of the magnificent belief that I had taught him in days
when my own was stronger. Close companionship with a dog of the truly
Greek spirit, under circumstances in which I now found myself, was bound
to be of a tonic value. I had seen, almost at the moment of Miss Kate's
disclosure, that a change was to come in our relations. Perhaps I was
wild enough at the moment to hope that it might be a change for the
better; but this was only in the first flush of it--of a moment ill
adapted for close reasoning. It took no great while to convince me that
the discovery in which we had cooperated was of a character necessarily
to put me from her even farther than she had at first chosen to put
me--and that was far enough, Heaven knows.
In effect I had given back her love to her, a love she had for ten years
unjustly doubted. That was the cold truth of it for one who knew women.
One who could doubt the tenth year as poignantly as she had doubted in
the first--would she not in bitterness regret her doubt ten other years,
and sweetly mourn her lost love still another ten? She who had let me be
little enough to her while she felt her wound--how much less could I be
when the hurt was healed? Before she might have been in want.
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