Her head was still bent, and as she did not make an answer to him, he turned to look away from her. He remembered how Sheila Morgan, in her anger at his cowardice, had struck him in the face and had furiously bidden him to leave her.... Mary would not strike him, but she, too, would bid him to go from her.... He felt her hand on his arm. "Quinny!" she said very softly, and he turned to find her standing nearer to him and looking up at him with no less love than she had looked at him before he had made his confession to her. "I don't love you, Quinny, only for what's fine in you," she said, and her speech was full of hesitation as if she could not adequately express her meaning. "I love you ... for _all_ of you. I just take the bad with the good, and ... and make the best of it, dear!" "You still want me, Mary?..." "My dear," she said, half laughing and half crying, "I've always wanted you!... Oh, what's the good," she went on with an impetuous rush of words, "of loving a man only when he comes up to your expectations. I want to love you even when you don't come up to my expectations, Quinny, and I do love you, dear. It hasn't anything to do with whether you're brave or not brave, or good or bad, or great or common. I just love you ... don't you see?... because you're _you_!..." He stared at her incredulously. He had been so certain that she would bid him leave her when she learned of his cowardice. "But!..." "Come home," she said. "You must be very tired, and cold!" She put her arm in his, and drew him homewards, and he yielded to her like a little child. As they turned the corner of the apple-orchard, they could see lights shining from the windows of the Manor, making a warm splash on the snow that lay in drifts about the garden. There was a great quietness that was broken now and then by the twittering of birds in the hedges as they nestled for the night, or the cries made by the screech-owls, hooting in the copse. 8 Mrs. Graham and Rachel had left them alone for a while, after dinner, and as he sat, with her at his feet, fondling her hair, she spoke of her feeling for him again.