Geoffrey still looked in the fire. He spoke musingly, with obviously no consciousness of superiority in his claim.
"To make her happy I would sacrifice a great deal. Maurice," he said; "I will help you to marry her. That is the only way in which I can make her happy."
Maurice stood stricken with stupor. His delicate skin turned from red to white. "Geoffrey," he gasped.
"_Will_ you make her happy?" asked Geoffrey, now turning his eyes upon him and looking at him steadily. A steadiness as great and, it seemed, as sincere, leaped to meet it in the other man's responsive soul.
In silence Geoffrey took his head and shook it. He went back to the table and sat down at it again. "I can pay off your debts--I have made some lucky hits lately on the Stock Exchange, and I can raise some money on my property--its value has gone up a good deal in the last years. Out of my income we can set aside enough to help support you and your wife; what you have now, once it's free, will do the rest, and her father no doubt can allow her something. If you are ever able with ease, to pay me back, well and good; but don't bother over it. I shall get on well enough on my official salary and the rest of my income. And I am always lucky with my speculations; I shan't be pinched."
"Do you mean it, Geoffrey?" All that was best in Maurice rose in the solemn gratitude, the boyish, loving wonder of the question.
With this possibility breaking in a sudden dawn upon him the half-passionate, half-frivolous, half-tempted and half-unwilling dallying of the past months lost its dubious enchantment. It was the difference between Angela's boudoir and a country meadow in spring. Freed from its pain, the thought of Felicia swept over him like music, Felicia, who not only seemed to embody the dew and the earliest lark and all things sweet and young, but Felicia, who called out all that was really best in him--his courage, his manliness, his willingness to face risks, Felicia so human, so dear, so understanding. Angela seemed an orchid, touched with drooping and promising no perfume, with her faded spiritual poses, her conscious spontaneity, her looking-glass idealism. He saw Angela as she was, with not even the glamour of her pathos to veil her.