this out from every point of view, and I’ve come to the conclusion that there are risks which have to be taken, though I don’t deny that they hurt horribly.”
“Katharine, you mind? “You'll mind too much.”
“No I shan’t,” she said stoutly. “I shall mind a good deal, but I’m prepared for that; I shall get through it, because you will help me. You'll both help me. In fact, we'll help each other. That’s a Christian doctrine, isn’t it?”
“It sounds more like Paganism to me,” Rodney groaned, as he reviewed the situation into which her Christian doctrine was plunging them.
And yet he could not deny that a divine relief possessed him, and that the future, instead of wearing a lead-coloured mask, now blossomed with a thousand varied gaieties and excitements. He was actually to see Cassandra within a week or perhaps less, and he was more anxious to know the date of her arrival than he could own even to himself. It seemed base to be so anxious to pluck this fruit of Katharine’s unexampled generosity and of his own contemptible baseness. And yet, though he used these words automatically, they had now no meaning. He was not debased in his own eyes by what he had done, and as for praising Katharine, were they not partners, conspirators, people bent upon the same quest together, so that to praise the pursuit of a common end as an act of generosity was meaningless. He took her hand and pressed it, not in thanks so much as in an ecstasy of comradeship.
“We will help each other,” he said, repeating her words, seeking her eyes in an enthusiasm of friendship.
Her eyes were grave but dark with sadness as they rested on him. “He’s already gone,” she thought, “far away—he thinks of me no more.” And the fancy came to her that, as they sat side by side, hand in hand, she
