"Because he thought that to press you was no way to make you care for me. He hoped that it would come about."
"It has not come about, David, with either of us," she said gently. "I am sure that would have been sufficient answer to him."
"No, Grizel, it would not, not now."
He had risen, and his face was whiter than she had ever seen it.
"I am going to hurt you, Grizel," he said, and every word was a pang to him. "I see no other way. It has got to be done. Dr. McQueen often talked to me about the things that troubled you when you were a little girl--the morbid fears you had then, and that had all been swept away years before I knew you. But though they had been long gone, you were so much to him that he tried to think of everything that might happen to you in the future, and he foresaw that they might possibly come back. 'If she were ever to care for some false loon!' he has said to me, and then, Grizel, he could not go on."
Grizel beat her hands. "If he could not go on," she said, "it was not because he feared what I should do."
"No, no," David answered eagerly, "he never feared for that, but for your happiness. He told me of a boy who used to torment you, oh, all so long ago, and of such little account that he had forgotten his name. But that boy has come back, and you care for him, and he is a false loon, Grizel."
She had risen too, and was flashing fire on David; but he went on.
"'If the time ever comes,' he said to me, 'when you see her in torture from such a cause, speak to her openly about it. Tell her it is I who am speaking through you. It will be a hard task to you, but wrestle through with it, David, in memory of any little kindness I may have done you, and the great love I bore my Grizel.'"
She was standing rigid now. "Is there any more, David?" she said in a low voice.
"Only this. I admired you then as I admire you now. I may not love you, Grizel, but of this I am very sure"--he was speaking steadily, he was forgetting no one--"that you are the noblest and bravest woman I have ever known, and I promised--he did not draw the promise from me, I gave it to him--that if I was a free man and could help you in any way without paining you by telling you these things, I would try that way first."
"And this is the way?"
"I could think of no other. Is it of no avail?"
She shook her head. "You have made such a dreadful mistake," she cried miserably, "and you won't see it. Oh, how you wrong him! I am the happiest girl in the world, and it is he who makes me so happy. But I can't explain. You need not ask me; I promised, and I won't."
"You used not to be so fond of mystery, Grizel."
"I am not fond of it now."
"Ah, it is he," David said bitterly, and he lifted his hat. "Is there nothing you will let me do for you, Grizel?" he cried.
"I thought you were to do so much for me when you came into this room," she admitted wistfully, "and said that you were in love. I thought it was with another woman."
He remembered that her face had brightened. "How could that have helped you?" he asked.
She saw that she had but to tell him, and for her sake he would do it at once. But she could not be so selfish.
"We need not speak of that now," she said.
"We must speak of it," he answered. "Grizel, it is but fair to me. It may be so important to me."
"You have shown that you don't care for her, David, and that ends it."
"Who is it?" He was much stirred.
"If you don't know----"
"Is it Elspeth?"
The question came out of him like a confession, and hope turned Grizel giddy.
"Do you love her, David?" she cried.
But he hesitated. "Is what you have told me true, that it would help you?" he asked, looking her full in the eyes.
"Do you love her?" she implored, but he was determined to have her answer first.
"Is it, Grizel?"
"Yes, yes. Do you, David?"
And then he admitted that he did, and she rocked her arms in joy.
"But oh, David, to say such things to me when you were not a free man! How badly you have treated Elspeth to-day!"
"She does not care for me," he said.