Island."
"Oh, but that is simply morbid, and the result of your long illness. You will not feel that way long."
"I hope not. The work is crying to be done. Perhaps, after all, I shall be able to help it more above ground than below."
"Of course you will. Don't you find it dreadfully lonely out there, with none but black people about you?"
"They are very fine people, some of them. And the loneliness only nails one the tighter to the work. Besides there are——"
"Has it never struck you that you might possibly help it quite as much by remaining here as by going out again?"
Oh, Jean! Jean!
"Never," he said, with a slight flush. "My work lies there, and I hope to give my life to it, and to give it up for it if need be, as my dear old friend gave his."
"But there are others who could do the work just as well, are there not?"
"Many, I hope. I hope many will."
"And, if I understand aright, Missionary Societies are always short of funds, and the work is hindered, or at all events progresses more slowly, in consequence."
"I have my own views as to that," he said quietly.
"Won't you tell me what they are? I am greatly interested."
"They are not shared by many of my friends, and I do not obtrude them. I believe that the work is God's work, and when He sees fit to provide larger ways and means, larger ways and means will be forthcoming. If we had all the money we wanted, we might lose our heads, and go ahead too fast—scamp the work perhaps, and prove but jerry-builders in the end. One cannot forget that it has taken Christianity eighteen hundred years to arrive at its present position, and that for long periods it lay almost dormant; whereas, if the Founder had deemed it best to accomplish the work at one stroke, He could have done it."
"Yes," she said thoughtfully. "I don't think I ever looked at it in that light before. And you are quite determined to go back?"
"Quite determined—only too grateful for the chance."
"And nothing would keep you here?"
"Nothing that I can imagine—except absolute incapacity for the work."
"You would not stop even if"—and she bent forward, with hands tightly clasped to prevent them jumping visibly before him, and eyes that shone like stars. God! how beautiful she was!—"if I begged you to do so?"
He jumped up hastily.
"If you——? If you begged me to—what?"
And her bright eyes, fixed intently on his lean face, caught the sudden fierce clench of the teeth inside, which threw the cheek-bones into bolder prominence. She noted it—she could almost hear the grinding of his teeth; and the game was in her hands. She had the advantage of understanding what the game was, while he was completely in the dark.
He stood gazing down at her for a moment, and then said more quietly—
"I'm afraid I don't quite understand. Perhaps my illness has dulled my brain somewhat."
"No, it hasn't, Mr. Blair. I was asking you in cold blood if you would not stay in England and marry me, and use my money from here for the furtherance of the cause out there."
He stared at her still with all his great heart in his eyes—all of it that was not jumping in his throat like a baby rabbit.
He gazed down at her for another moment, then bent suddenly before her and took her hand and kissed it, and said huskily and in jerks—between the rabbit-kicks—
"You will think no ill of me—if I go—at once. I dare not stop——"
But she had gripped his hand and held it tight, and stood holding him, and her face shone and her eyes.
"Then—will you take me with you, Kenneth?"
"Take you with me?" Her rings cut into her next fingers under the fierceness of his sudden grip, and she could have sung aloud, for the grip came right from his heart and told his tale to her. "Do you mean it—Jean?"
"Surely."
And yet he had a doubt. You must bear with him. You see, he had been half inside the gates of death, and—well, the proceeding was distinctly out of the common run of things.
"Is it myself—or the work?" he asked almost fiercely. For the thought had flashed across him—and not unnaturally—that this was but one more result of the excitement of the meeting last night. She had been shaken out of her usual discretion and decorum, had probably lain awake all night, and——
But her eyes were steady as stars, and as bright, as she said—
"Both! But yourself first. I liked you the first time we met. I loved you the second. I have never ceased to think about you. Your going away left a blank in my life. After last night I love and trust you more than ever, if that be possible. Last night my way was made clear to me."
"Now, glory be to God!" he cried, and kissed the wistful lips that looked as if they had been waiting long for just that seal to the compact. And then he sat down suddenly and covered his face with his hands, as though what was in him was not even for her eyes.
She sank down on to a footstool beside his chair, and noticed how white his hand was compared with the great, strong brown hand which had held hers that day in the Greenock church.
He was himself again in a moment—or suppose we say he came back from where he had been—and his face was full of the old radiant glow as he raised it to look at her.
"It is real, isn't it?" he asked in a light-hearted, boyish way.
"I'm real," she said, smiling back at him. "You seem not quite yourself."
"Did you ever try to imagine what it would feel like to have every single desire of your heart suddenly granted to you all in a lump?"
"I don't think I ever did. It sounds as if it might be too much for one."
"It is—almost. And you wonder if it is real and true, or only a vain imagining. Jean, is it true that you care for me?"
"No—love you, Ken—dearly—every inch of you."
"And that you are going to marry me?"
"If you ask me properly."
"Jean, will you marry me and come out with me and share my work?"
"I will!"
He gazed at her steadfastly, and said softly—
"Thank God! it is true!"
He enjoyed that full sunshine of felicity for close on five minutes, and then said more soberly—
"Do you quite understand, dear, all that you are giving up? Life out there——"
