She was unutterably relieved; everything seemed blank and awful while she thought he would not take her back.

“It’s not duty only,” she said. “All these months— the loneliness—I—I can’t live by myself any longer. I can’t! I—once said I hated you. It wasn’t true, Stephen. I—don’t love you—not as I should love you, but I miss you—when you’re not with me, and for my own sake I—I want to come back. But—but if you don’t want me, say so! Please say so!”

“I want you so much that—” he checked himself. He began to pace restlessly up and down the room. From the sofa Elizabeth watched him and knew, now that her fate was uncertain, that she must go back to him. Hardly daring to breathe, she waited, wondering what would become of her if he refused to take her home. He came to a halt before her, and his voice when he spoke was hard with suppressed feeling.

“Look at me. Yes. I thought so. You’re frightened, Elizabeth. Frightened—of me! Frightened lest I should agree to your terms. Aren’t you?”

The words came rapped out sternly, but they did not alarm Elizabeth. She was thinking, How nice to hear him call me Elizabeth! I must always have hated Charles’s “Betty,” I suppose.

“No, Stephen. I’m not frightened. Not—as you think.”

The hardness went out of him; he knelt, and she thought that she heard him sigh. He laid a firm, reassuring hand over her fingers, and held them tightly.

“Oh, my darling, my darling!” he said huskily, just as he might have said it a year ago. His head went down, his lips touched her sleeve. “I know—and I’m—grateful. You needn’t be frightened; I love you too much to accept your terms. If you come back to me it will be platonically. There shall never be anything more than—friendship between us, until you wish it. Perhaps—that way—you’ll learn to care. You’ll only learn—to hate me—the other way.”

Something within her chest seemed to swell and grow warm; she had thought this man a monster. Her fingers moved under his and clasped them.

“That would be cheating still, Stephen. Not—fair.”

“No, sweetheart, because I know where I stand. We’ve wiped out the old bargain and made a new one. Mine are the only terms on which I’ll take you home.”

She looked at him in wonderment. Shyly she said.

“Can—you—bear those—terms?”

He was surprised; for her to have said that showed that she had changed indeed.