"Cleland," he said in a singularly gentle voice, "I once told you that I wished you well. You did not understand. Let me put it a little plainer.... Is there anything I can do for you? Is there anything I can refrain from doing which might add to your contentment?" "That’s an odd thing to ask," returned the other. "No. It is merely friendship speaking—a very deep friendship, if you can understand it." "You’re very kind, Grismer.... I don’t know quite how to take it—or how to answer. There is nothing that you can do for me—nothing one man could ask of another——" "Ask it, all the same." "I can’t." "Then I’ll offer it.... I give up—Stephanie—to you." The silence lasted a long time. Neither man stirred. Finally Cleland said in an altered voice: "I can’t ask it—unless she does, too. I don’t know what to say to you, Grismer, except that no man ever spoke more nobly——" "_That_ is enough. If you really think it, that means everything, Cleland.... And this is my chance to tell you that when I—married her—I never dreamed that it could ever be a question of you.... I don’t believe she did, either.... But it has become so. That _is_ the question, now.... And so I—step out." "I—I tell you I can’t accept—that way—unless she asks it, too," stammered Cleland.... "After all, it’s got to be on a basis of her happiness.... I am not _sure_ that her happiness lies in my keeping. I do not know how much she cares for you—how deeply you are engaged in her heart.... I can’t find out.... I’m like a blind man involved in a maze!" "She cares for me," said Grismer in his low, pleasant voice. "We have been intimate in mind—close and responsive, intellectually.... Sentimentally, too. On her part a passionless loyalty to whatever in me she believed appealed to her intelligence and imagination; an emotional solicitude for what she discovered in me that aroused her sympathy——" He turned and looked at Cleland in the darkness: "Hers is a tender heart, Cleland. Impulse carries it to extremes. Injustice to another provokes quick action from her; and nothing so sways her as her intense sense of gratitude, unless it be her fear of wounding others. "I shall have to tell you more, some day. If I do, it will be more than I would do for anybody else alive—the ultimate sacrifice of pride." He rose and stood gazing out across the mist at a far star above it, glimmering with dimmed brilliancy all alone. "It couldn’t have been," he said, half to himself. "I always knew it. Not that the thought of you ever crossed my mind. I knew it would come somehow. It simply couldn’t be." He turned to Cleland with a sudden laugh that sounded light and natural: "This is to be no tragedy. It will disentangle itself easily and simply. I am very sure that she is in love with you. Tell her what I have said to you.... And—good night, old chap." *CHAPTER XXX*