“The rest--if a father may say so--is history. It is, isn’t it, Miss Verinder? Now I musn’t tire you by too long a visitation. But I felt that these little early details would interest you. They are so little and yet so much. And they should certainly come into his life when it is written. I think it is a mistake in biographies to omit all the slight and seemingly trivial details and give one only the big events. Nothing is trivial in the lives of really great men.”
Miss Verinder assured him that she had been enthrallingly interested; and, taking leave, he detained her hand in his for a moment while he asked if he might call again in a few days’ time before he returned to Devonshire. She was conscious during these moments of a constraint or uneasiness that he had seemed to feel even when he was talking to her so gently and kindly. It had been as if the talk was merely superficial, and that beneath it there was a communication that he desired to make but could not. Now it seemed that this had risen close to the surface, and with her hand in his, she braced herself to meet it. Perhaps that mental preparation on her side, detected and misunderstood, was sufficient to check him again; for, without saying anything further, he went away.
Thinking about this afterwards, Emmie felt that it had spoilt everything. It was not difficult to find interpretations of a reticence or shrinking that would check Mr. Dyke’s flow of words and make him hesitate each time that he approached a fuller confidence; yet if such thoughts, however natural they might be, were really in his mind, she did not wish ever to see him again. If they were not there, then she wished, without doubts or self-questionings, to enjoy the immense comfort and support that the sight of his face and the sound of his voice gave to her. She determined at once to lay the doubt at rest, and when, fulfilling his promise, he reappeared at the flat, she asked him a very simple question.
“Mr. Dyke, do you blame me for what I have done?”
“_Blame_ you? Oh, how _could_ I? How can I? Oh, my goodness, no,” said Mr. Dyke, in visible agitation, and he sprang up from the sofa and stood looking down at Emmie, who was seated on one of her lowest chairs. “But I see what you mean. A clergyman? I feared you might think--That is why I have been so anxious to see you. That is what I wanted to say--but it was so difficult.” He was stooping, and he took her hand and raised it to his lips. “To tell you my gratitude to you for your love of my son. And that I, just as much as he, can measure the extent of your sacrifice--its nobility and its completeness.”