found you ill, and I embarked on a career of most futile diplomacy. I wanted to win you back to life, you see, without permitting or harbouring any sentiment. You proposed to die because you were bored. That seemed to me feeble, futile.'
Charlie laughed.
' It was rather. But under the same circumstances I should do the same again.'
' Ah, the same circumstances can't occur.'
He turned to her with the love-light shining brightly in his eyes.
' Let us “ lean and love it over again,” ' he said. ' How did it happen? What change came to you? Tell me.'
' And to you?'
' There never came a change to me. I have always loved you.'
' It was your illness first of all,' she said, ' and that made me want to help. I am very practical; the futility of your dying seemed to me so stupid. And as my handiwork, the attachment of you to life, grew, I got rather proud of it. It was like taking a plant that was lying all draggled in the mud and training it upright.'
She paused a moment.
' That grew,' she went on, ' till one night you were taken suddenly ill at Davos. I came up to see you, do you remember? And at that moment—this is the only way I can explain it—I began to become a woman. So that, if you or I could owe each other anything, dear, the debt I owe you is infinitely greater than what you owe me. I gave you perhaps a few years of life, you gave me life itself and love.'
She bent her head, took up his hand where it lay on the arm of her chair, and kissed it.
' Ah, not that, Sybil,' said he.
' Yes, just that,' she answered.
