"I'm so glad you have come back," she said, with a little tremble in her voice; "so glad!" And then she looked up suddenly into the face above her, surprised at the almost painful strength of his grip. For Paul Macleod's composure was almost gone, and he was struggling hard for self-control. What she saw kept her silent; but she bent towards him till her soft, warm cheek touched his hand caressingly. The action, with its tale of tender solicitude, its boundless sympathy, was too much for him. He drew in his breath hard, and resting his arm on the mantelpiece turned from her to hide his face upon it, and so escape the pity in her eyes. And he had dreamed of something so different! Of something coldly just, reasonably reproachful! Without a word she had guessed, had _known_, that he must be free to come, because he _had_ come back. "What is it, dear?" she asked softly, as she stood beside him. "Are you afraid that I am angry? Are you afraid that I care--about _that?_ Paul! I do not choose to care--I will not. Look at me, and you will see if that is not the truth!" What he saw was a face soft with the passion he knew so well--the passion which lies so perilously close to self--which claims so much, and resents so easily. But it was radiant also, as with a white flame of cleansing fire, pitiless in its purity. "What is it to me?" she went on, her voice ringing clearer. "What is it to any woman unless she stoops to care? Oh! I understand now, Paul--I understand things of which I never even dreamed before; things which have been in your life--things which might have been in mine, perhaps--God knows!--if I had been in your place. But they are no more to me than this--a grief, a regret, because they are a stain upon your past, as all wrong must be. They are no more to me than that, because I do not choose to count them more!" So, with a smile in her eyes, and a quiver of pain on her lips, she raised her face to his and kissed him. Thus neither humiliation nor forgiveness was allowed a part in this woman's reading of the Divine Comedy. Perhaps she was wrong, and yet no scorn, no righteous indignation, could have made Paul Macleod feel more acutely the gulf which lay between his past and hers. Between their futures also. They might be friends, but from that pure Love of hers he was for ever outcast, though she might not know it--though he might spend his life in trying to conceal the fact that he lived on a lower plane than she did. Why! the past was with him _now_, even at the touch of her lips. He loved her, as he had loved so often before. "Marjory!" he cried passionately, "I don't deserve it, but I can't miss it--if you will put up with me?" She drew herself away, and looked at him with a half-tender, half-mocking expression. "Put up with you? What else is there to be done now that you have come back to me?"