"I guess I don't quite get your meaning, Mary," he muttered, but his fingers were beginning to tighten on hers. "Of course, I understand you are still my wife, and--You don't mean you--you are going to take me back!" "No. I am asking you to take _me_ back." He could not speak for a full minute or more. "You'll give me another chance? That's what you mean--that's what you're really saying, isn't it?" He was fairly gasping out the words. "Yes, Tom." "Oh!" He turned and flung himself on the bench, bursting into tears. "I don't deserve it--I don't deserve it! It's too much to hope for." These and other sentences fell in broken disorder from his lips. She did not speak, but sat down beside him, laying her hand on his shoulder. After a time, he grew quieter,--then almost deathly still. She shook him gently. "Will you come home with me now, Tom?" she asked. She too had been crying softly. He looked up. They were so close together that she could detect the humble, wistful look in his face. His lips moved, but the words did not come at once. "Home with you?" "Yes. We have our plans to discuss, Tom." "To your father's house?" he persisted. "Yes. He understands. I talked it all over with him this afternoon. It was hard to do, Tom,--it was very hard to hurt that poor old man all over again. But I had it to do, and he understands. He asked me to bring you back with me. I told him I would. He wants to talk with you in the morning." "Mary," he began, fingering his hat in the extremity of an emotion that almost benumbed him, "I don't know whether you want to hear me say it, but I've never stopped caring for you. It isn't all Christine with me. I just want to tell you that." "I understand, Tom," she said, still more gently. "I can't take any help from your father," he managed to say after another long period of silence. "He will offer nothing but his hand and his well-wishes." "This is all so unexpected. I'm trying to get too many things through my head at once. Let me think for a minute or two." She was silent, looking off into the gloomy little street below. A man was whistling gayly near by. From afar came the sound of rumbling street cars. She had not noticed these or any other sounds before. A policeman came up to the corner, stopped and looked at the huddled twain for a minute or two, and then moved off. The sight of that uniform created a sudden chill in her heart. Tom Braddock began speaking again, in low, steady tones in which there was not only a sort of bitter determination but something like defiance.