We belong back where the light
is not so strong and things go slower! We get--blinded and breathless and
confused. I have nothing left, nor have you. Will you come with me to
that crack in the Alps, as Dick used to call it, and let me--love you?"
"Oh! John Ledyard! What a man you are!"
"Exactly! _What_ a man I am! A poor, rough fool, always loving what was
best; never daring to risk anything for it. I'm tired to death----"
She was beside him, kneeling, with her snow-touched head upon his knee.
"So am I. Tired, tired! I could not do without you. I have leaned on you
far too long; we all have. Now, dear, lean on me for the rest of the
way."
He bent his grizzled head upon hers and his eyes had the look of prayer
that Priscilla once discovered.
"Dick--has not told me his real trouble," Helen faintly said. "I know it
is somehow connected with a--nurse."
"The redheaded one," Ledyard put in; "a regular little marplot!" Then he
gave that gruff laugh of his that Helen knew to be a signal of surrender.
"It's odd," he went on, "how one can admire and respect when often he
disapproves.
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