You can't deny it." He might deny it, but it was true.

Ah, Tommy, you bore with her with infinite patience, but did it never strike you that she kept you to the earth?
If Elspeth could be happy without you! You were sure she could not, but if she could!--had that thought never made you flap your wings?
"I often had a pain at my heart," she told him, "which I kept from you.

It was a feeling that your solicitude for me, perhaps, prevented your caring for any other woman.

It seemed terrible and unnatural that I should be a bar to that.

I felt that I was starving you, and not you only, but an unknown woman as well." "So long as I had you, Elspeth," he said reproachfully, "was not that enough ?" "It seemed to be enough," she answered gravely, "but even while I comforted myself with that, I knew that it should not be enough, and still I feared that if it was, the blame was mine.