Perhaps I was wild enough at the moment to hope that it might be a change for the better; but this was only in the first flush of it--of a moment ill adapted for close reasoning.

It took no great while to convince me that the discovery in which we had cooperated was of a character necessarily to put me from her even farther than she had at first chosen to put me--and that was far enough, Heaven knows.
In effect I had given back her love to her, a love she had for ten years unjustly doubted.

That was the cold truth of it for one who knew women.
One who could doubt the tenth year as poignantly as she had doubted in the first--would she not in bitterness regret her doubt ten other years, and sweetly mourn her lost love still another ten?
She who had let me be little enough to her while she felt her wound--how much less could I be when the hurt was healed?
Before she might have been in want.

At least that was conceivable.

Now her want was met.