It was delightful to see him young
again, eager, boyishly pleased with himself. It seemed there was a joy
she had not dreamed of in yielding victory as well as in gaining it. A
new tenderness was growing up in her. How considerate, how patient, how
self-forgetful he had always been. She wanted to mother him. To take
him in her arms and croon over him, hushing away remembrance of the old
sad days.
Folk's words came back to her: "And poor Jack Allway. Tell him I thank
him for all those years of love and gentleness." She gave him the
message.
Folk had been right. He was not offended. "Dear old chap," he said.
"That was kind of him. He was always generous."
He was silent for a while, with a quiet look on his face.
"Give him our love," he said. "Tell him we came together, at the end."
It was on her tongue to ask him, as so often she had meant to do of late,
what had been the cause of her mother's illness--if illness it was: what
it was that had happened to change both their lives. But always
something had stopped her--something ever present, ever watchful, that
seemed to shape itself out of the air, bending towards her with its
finger on its lips.
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