The Helpers

"You are worthy; worthy of the best that any man can give you, Constance. How little I have to offer you, beyond a love that was strong enough to stand aside for the sake of your happiness, you know. Ever since that afternoon when you strove with me for my own soul I've been living on your compassion, and it is very sweet – but I want more. May I hope to win more – in time?"

She shook her head, and his heart stopped beating. But it came alive again with a tumultuous bound at the words of the soft-spoken reply.

"You won it long ago, so long that I've forgotten when and how. And it's strong, too, like yours. I've tried hard enough to starve it, but it has lived – lived on nothing."

She was sitting in a low willow rocker, and the distance between them was altogether impossible. So he went down on one knee and put his arms about her; and but for his manhood would have put his face in her bosom and wept.

"Do you really mean that, Constance?" he said, when he had drunk his fill from the deep wells in the loving eyes.

"I do."

"In spite of what you believed I had done to Garvin, and of what you believed I was capable of doing with Margaret?"

"In spite of everything. Wasn't it dreadful?"

"It was – " There was no superlative strong enough, though he sought for it painfully and with tears. "God help me, sweetheart, I believe I shall go mad with the joy of it." And having said that, speech forsook him, and the silence that is golden came between. After a while she broke it to say:

"Dick is good, isn't he? – to be so long finding his slippers and the cigar."

"Dick is a man and a brother. I wonder if we can persuade him to give me a place on the Myriad."

"You wouldn't take it."

"Why wouldn't I?"

"Because you own an undivided third of a richer mine than the Little Myriad, and – and you are going to marry another third," she said, with sweet audacity.

There was a hassock convenient, and he drew it up to sit at her feet.

"Break it as gently as you can," he entreated. "My cup is too full to hold much more. Besides, I've been in Mexico for the last three months, and nothing happens there."

"It's the Midas," she explained, beginning in the midst. "You saved it for Garvin, but he was only a half-owner."

"And the other?"

"Was my father. When it came to the apportionment they both said 'thirds,' and that is what poppa and Dick are waiting to say to you now."

He found his feet rather unsteadily.

"I can't take it," he said; "you know I can't. It would be too much like taking a reward for an act of simple justice. Moreover, I have my reward, and it isn't to be spoken of in the same day with any Midas of them all. I'll go and tell them so."

She rose and stood beside him, lifting the loving eyes to his. The soft glow of the firelight made a golden aureole of the red-brown hair, and the sweet lips were tremulous.

"If you must, Henry. But loving-kindness isn't always in giving and serving and relinquishing. My father has his ideal of justice, too, and so has James Garvin. But for you, they say, the Midas would never have been found, or, having been found, would straightway have been lost again. I know the money is nothing to you, – to us two, who have so much; but won't you make a little concession, a little sacrifice of pride, – for their sakes, Henry?"

He took her face between his hands and bent to kiss the lips of pleading.

"Not for their sakes, nor for all the world beside, my beloved; but always and always for yours. Come; let us go together."