As they rode at a walk along the little shred of road left to them,
the man turned gravely.
"Drennie," he began, "she waited for me, all those years. What I was
helped to do by such splendid friends as you and your brother and
Wilfred, she was back here trying to do for herself. I told you back
there the night before I left that I was afraid to let myself question
my feelings toward you. Do you remember?"
She met his eyes, and her own eyes were frankly smiling.
"You were very complimentary, Samson," she told him. "I warned you
then that it was the moon talking."
"No," he said firmly, "it was not the moon. I have since then met that
fear, and analyzed it. My feeling for you is the best that a man can
have, the honest worship of friendship. And," he added, "I have
analyzed your feeling for me, too, and, thank God! I have that same
friendship from you. Haven't I?"
For a moment, she only nodded; but her eyes were bent on the road
ahead of her. The man waited in tense silence. Then, she raised her
face, and it was a face that smiled with the serenity of one who has
wakened out of a troubled dream.
"You will always have that, Samson, dear," she assured him.
"Have I enough of it, to ask you to do for her what you did for me? To
take her and teach her the things she has the right to know?"
"I'd love it," she cried. And then she smiled, as she added: "She will
be much easier to teach. She won't be so stupid, and one of the things
I shall teach her"--she paused, and added whimsically--"will be to make
you cut your hair again."
But, just before they drew up at the house of old Spicer South, she
said: "I might as well make a clean breast of it, Samson, and give my vanity
the punishment it deserves. You had me in deep doubt."
"About what?"
"About--well, about us. I wasn't quite sure that I wanted Sally to
have you--that I didn't need you myself. I've been a shameful little
cat to Wilfred."
"But now--?" The Kentuckian broke off.
"Now, I know that my friendship for you and my love for him have both
had their acid test--and I am happier than I've ever been before. I'm
glad we've been through it. There are no doubts ahead. I've got you
both."