White Fire Part 8

"Is it myself--or the work?" he asked almost fiercely. For the thought had flashed across him--and not unnaturally--that this was but one more result of the excitement of the meeting last night. She had been shaken out of her usual discretion and decorum, had probably lain awake all night, and----

But her eyes were steady as stars, and as bright, as she said--

"Both! But yourself first. I liked you the first time we met. I loved you the second. I have never ceased to think about you. Your going away left a blank in my life. After last night I love and trust you more than ever, if that be possible. Last night my way was made clear to me."

"Now, glory be to G.o.d!" he cried, and kissed the wistful lips that looked as if they had been waiting long for just that seal to the compact. And then he sat down suddenly and covered his face with his hands, as though what was in him was not even for her eyes.

She sank down on to a footstool beside his chair, and noticed how white his hand was compared with the great, strong brown hand which had held hers that day in the Greenock church.

He was himself again in a moment--or suppose we say he came back from where he had been--and his face was full of the old radiant glow as he raised it to look at her.

"It _is_ real, isn't it?" he asked in a light-hearted, boyish way.

"I'm real," she said, smiling back at him. "You seem not quite yourself."

"Did you ever try to imagine what it would feel like to have every single desire of your heart suddenly granted to you all in a lump?"

"I don't think I ever did. It sounds as if it might be too much for one."

"It is--almost. And you wonder if it is real and true, or only a vain imagining. Jean, is it true that you care for me?"

"No--love you, Ken,--dearly--every inch of you."

"And that you are going to marry me?"

"If you ask me properly."

"Jean, will you marry me and come out with me and share my work?"

"I will!"

He gazed at her steadfastly, and said softly--

"Thank G.o.d! it is true!"

He enjoyed that full sunshine of felicity for close on five minutes, and then said more soberly--

"Do you quite understand, dear, all that you are giving up? Life out there----"

"It is enough for me at present to realise what I have gained. Can you not understand, dear, that to a woman the time comes when the heart's love of one man is more to her than all the rest of the whole wide world? Life touched its highest with me when you made my fingers bleed a few minutes ago."

"I made your----" and he s.n.a.t.c.hed her hands and saw the tiny wounds.

"Oh, forgive me! I did not know----" and he kissed them tenderly.

"Sweet wounds!" she said. "They told me more than all you have forgotten to tell me--all that I was aching to know."

"And you really care for me like that, Jean? For me! Is it possible?

I wonder why?"

"Perhaps G.o.d had something to do with it. It is so very good that it must be from Him."

"Yes," he said emphatically.

"And now--when are you going to tell me that you care a little for me, and are not just taking me because I threw myself at your head and you could not help yourself?"

"Oh, Jean! Jean! you knew--though how I cannot tell. You have been shrined in my heart since that second time we met, but I knew it was hopeless----"

"Clever boy! And you hardly knew me then."

"I knew your eyes the moment I looked into them, and they have never left me since."

"Such common brown eyes! But you didn't know what lay behind them?"

"The most beautiful eyes in the world."

And by degrees they settled into quiet talk of the future.

He still feared she did not fully understand all she was giving up, and conscientiously endeavoured to make it clear to her.

She listened to please him, and because it was sweet to hear him, for all his thought in the matter was for her and her well-being.

So she let him go on; and when he had exhausted all his arguments, she said quietly--

"It is all nothing and less than nothing, dearest, compared with the rest. Where you go I go. Your work shall be my work, and your people my people, and nothing but death shall part us."

And with a heart that seemed like to burst for very fulness of joy in her, he said, "Amen!"

CHAPTER VI

A SUDDEN WIDE HORIZON

"Mr. Blair! The young man who spoke at the meeting the other night?

Why, I didn't even know that you knew him, Jean!" said Aunt Jannet Harvey, gazing at her in wide-eyed wonder.

"Oh, I've known him since I was thirteen!"

"And you never spoke to me about him! Why I don't remember your ever even mentioning his name!"

"I don't believe I ever did. We will make up for it now, auntie."

"And he has really had the audacity to ask you to marry him?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "And he has really had the audacity to ask you to marry him."]

"Yes, auntie,"--very meekly.