Her eyes were wet: "And he would not stay and let me thank him! Poor
fellow, poor Jaspar Hume! Has he been up here all these years?"

Her face was flushed, and pain was struggling with the joy she felt in
seeing her husband again.

"Yes, he has been here all the time."

"Then he has not succeeded in life, Clive!" Her thoughts went back to the
days when, blind and ill, Hume went away for health's sake, and she
remembered how sorry then she felt for him, and how grieved she was that
when he came back strong and well, he did not come near her or her
husband, and offered no congratulations. She had not deliberately wronged
him. She knew he cared for her: but so did Lepage. A promise had been
given to neither when Jaspar Hume went away; and after that she grew to
love the successful, kind-mannered genius who became her husband. No real
pledge had been broken. Even in this happiness of hers, sitting once
again at her husband's feet, she thought with tender kindness of the man
who had cared for her eleven years ago; and who had but now saved her
husband.

"He has not succeeded in life," she repeated softly. Looking down at her,
his brow burning with a white heat, Lepage said: "He is a great man,
Rose."

"I am sure he is a good man," she added.

Perhaps Lepage had borrowed some strength not all his own, for he said
almost sternly: "He is a great man."