“Thank God, I have got you, my own dear love,” she murmured. “It has been a hard battle for you--this morning. I went out as soon as I dared--to go to him. I seemed to be going to do an awful thing--to give him that pain for our sakes. He told me I had not treated him wickedly--but I felt as if I had been committing murder, until I saw your face at the door. I told him all--all that I knew about my own feelings and yours. I said that you did not know I loved you--that your noble-heartedness was making the sacrifice--that I would marry him and leave you and never see you again, and be a devoted wife to him, if he wished it, but that my love was given to you. And he looked all the time at me with an iron-grey face, and scarcely spoke a word. Tell me, Stephen dear, does it pain you to hear?” “No,” said Joyce, softly. “Your heart has been bursting with it. It is best for us to share it, as we shall share all things, joy and pain, to the far end.” “I shall feel lighter for telling you. It was so terrible to see him--oh, Stephen, if I had not loved you, I couldn’t have borne it--he seemed stricken. Oh, why is there all this pain in the world? And to think that I--Yvonne--should have had to inflict it--either on him, who has been good and kind to me, or on you, whom I love better than I thought I could love anything in the world! And when I had ended, he said, ‘He is young, and I am old; he has had all the sufferings and despair of life, and my lot has been cast in pleasant places; he has come out of the furnace with love and charity in his heart, and I have pampered my pride and uncharitableness. Go back to him--and I pray God to bless you both.’ He spoke as if each word was a knife driven into him--and his face--I shall never forget it--it seemed to grow old, and ashen, and hardened.” She covered her face with her hands for a moment, and then, suddenly, the memory of the night flashing through her, she dashed them away with a woman’s fierceness and clasped his head. “But your need was greater, a million times greater than his,” she cried in ringing tones, “and your sufferings greater, and your heart nobler, and I should have died if I had not come to you--you are my king, my lord, my God, my everything.” *****