As he sat down in the big chair, and the light shone on his face, she
saw how tired he looked, as if the days and the nights since she had
seen him, had been days and nights of vigil.
She felt a surging sense of sympathy, which set her trembling as she
had trembled when she had touched his letter as it had laid on her
desk, but when she spoke her voice was steady.
"I am going to make you a cup of tea--then we can talk."
He watched her as she made it, her deft hands unadorned, except by the
one quaint ring, the whiteness of her skin set on by her green gown,
the whiteness of her soul symbolized by the lilies.
He leaned forward and spoke suddenly. "Mary Ballard," he said, "if I
ever reach paradise, I shall pray that it may be like this, with the
golden light and the fragrance, and you in the midst of it."
Earnestly over the lilies, she looked at him. "Then you believe in
Paradise?"
"I should like to think that in some blessed future state I should come
upon you in a garden of lilies."
"Perhaps you will." She was smiling, but her hand shook.
She felt shy, almost tongue-tied. She made him his tea, and gave him a
cup; then she spoke of commonplaces, and the little kettle boiled and
bubbled and sang as if there were no sorrow or sadness in the whole
wide world.
She came at last timidly to the thing she had to say.
"I don't quite know how to begin about your letter. You see when I
read it, it wasn't easy for me at first to think straight. I hadn't
thought of you as having any such background to your life. Somehow the
outlines I had filled in were--different. I am not quite sure what I
had thought--only it had been nothing like--this."
"I know. You could not have been expected to imagine such a past."
"Oh, it is not your past which weighs so heavily--on my heart; it is
your future."
Her eyes were full of tears. She had not meant to say it just that
way. But it had come--her voice breaking on the last words.
He did not speak at once, and then he said: "I have no right to trouble
you with my future."
"But I want to be troubled."
"I shall not let you. I shall not ask that of your friendship. Last
night when I came back to my rooms I found a rose blooming upon the
pages of a book. It seemed to tell me that I had not lost your
friendship; and you have given me this hour. This is all I have a
right to ask of your generosity."