“Come to think of it,” he said, “I’ve filled my purpose with her. She has the name she asked for. She has the ring and she has the certificate. She hasn’t any further use for me, but this does prove that she has me on her mind, that at least she didn’t use me and forget me.”
Then Jamie dropped the Pacific as being rather impersonal and confined himself to the flowers. He held them daintily in his slender fingers and looked at them with absorbed, questioning eyes.
“I wish,” he said, “that you could talk. I wish your little faces could tell me what you saw in her face when she gathered you. I wish that I knew exactly what was in her heart. I wish I knew whether she is very sure that she has finished with me, or whether there’s something more that I could do for her.”
Then Jamie shook himself and sat straight.
“By gracious!” he said, and this time he addressed a particularly tall, particularly straight, unusually handsome yellow hollyhock growing beside the pergola. “By gracious! I’m not so sure that she’d get me any farther if she did want me! It’s one thing to offer a name you haven’t any use for and a body that’s not going to last so very long as a sop to dry a woman’s tears, not of repentance, but of fear, a fear that the world is going to shun the leper of disgrace, fear that the accusing eyes of a child are going to look into her face and find her wanting—it’s one thing to do what you can when your time for doing anything is strictly limited. It’s only a few days now until this month is going to be passed, and if Margaret
