Then a thing, which would have been amusing if it had not been so deeply human, happened.

She and John Sibley went out of the house together into the moonlit night, and the reaction seized them both at the same moment.

She gave a gulp and burst into tears, and he, though as tall as Crozier, also broke down, and they sat on the stump of a tree together, her hand in his, and cried like two children.
"Never since I was a little runt--did I--never cried in thirty years--and here I am-leaking like a pail!" Thus spoke John Sibley in gasps and squeezing Kitty's hand all the time unconsciously, but spontaneously, and as part of what he felt.

He would not, however, have dared to hold her hand on any other occasion, while always wanting to hold it, and wanting her also to share his not wholly reputed, though far from precarious, existence.

He had never got so far as to tell her that; but if she had understanding she would realise after to-night what he had in his mind.