"It is a different thing without Alison to look to and
keep one up," he said.
"There are higher motives," was my stupid speech.
"It is precious hard on a poor fellow to be left alone with his
higher motives, as you call them, before he has well begun to act on
his lower."
And then, I don't know how, he began talking drearily, almost as if I
was not there, of his having once begun to fancy he could do
something creditable enough to make me some day look on him as I used
to do in the good old times. My heart gave a great bound, and
remembering how Harold said I discouraged him, out came, "How do you
know that I don't?"
How he sprang up! And--no, I can't tell what we said, only we found
it was no new beginning, only taking up an old, old precious thread--
something brought it all out. He had talked it all over with Harold
when he came back from Florence, and had taken home a little hope
which he said had helped him through the solitary hours of his
recovery. So it was Harold who, after all, gave us to one another.
Outspoken Dora informed us, before the day was much older, that the
Longs had asked whether that was her brother, or my young man. So we
took them into our confidence, and even borrowed "the trap" for one
of the roughest and the sweetest drives that ever we had, through
those splashing lanes, dropping Dermot at his lodgings to write his
letters, while the harvest moon made a path over the sea, no longer
leaden, but full of silvery glittering light.
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