Page:Restless Earth.djvu/225

He had assisted her to her bed, and had left her to fling himself upon his knees at the bedside of his wife. He had been crushed with unutterable shame and remorse, and the dark hours had been hours of intense suffering.

Yet he must have slept; and Patricia had gone before he could beg her forgiveness and utter his heart-felt thanks for her care of Grace.

He sat with the sunlight upon his greying hair, his shoulders drooping pathetically—the pitiful shadow of the man he had been. In his heart was a curious emptiness, a sense of dull finality. He felt old and tired.

A gentle hand touched his arm, settling upon it as lightly as a bird. He turned to smile upon the bandaged face of his wife, and his own hand covered hers.

“Jimmy, we haven’t quite arrived at the happy ending, have we?”

He shook his head slowly.

“This is a happier ending than I could have dreamed during these last weeks, Grace,” he answered softly.

“But it isn’t complete, Jimmy, is it?”

“There is never completeness in happy endings, my dear. It is not in the nature of things.”

“You evade the point, Jimmy. Our happiness—yours and mine—is clouded by the thought of—Pat.”

“Grace!”

“Oh, I do not mean that we fear she will come between us again. I mean that we are, and always will be, conscious that she is unhappy.”

James Harley was silent.

“Pat deserves happiness, Jlmmy And I stand in her way—and in your way———”

“Oh, my dear! You must not say such things.”

“You’re a dear old Jimmy to speak like that. It is the way you will always speak to me. But, in this darkness, Jimmy, I can read your heart. I see some things much more clearly now that I am blind.”