are to-day Jack's wife and always will be just Jack's wife--and
why to-day I am Patricia's husband--and why Lichfield to-day is
Lichfield. There is something braver in life than to be just reasonable,
thank God! And so, we keep the faith, my dear, however obsolete we find
fidelity to be. We keep to the old faith--we of Lichfield, who have
given hostages to the past. We remember even now that we gave freely in
an old time, and did not haggle.... And so, we are proud--yes! we are
consumedly proud, and we know that we have earned the right to be
proud."

A little later Colonel Musgrave said:

"And yet--it takes a monstrous while to dispose of our universe's
subtleties. I have loved you my whole life long, as accurately as we
can phrase these matters. There is no--no _reasonable_ reason why you
should not marry me now; and you would marry me if I pressed it. And I
do not press it. Perhaps it all comes of our both having been reared in
Lichfield. Perhaps that is why I, too, have been 'thinking it over.' You
see," he added, with a smile, "the rivet in grandfather's neck is not
lightly to be ignored, after all. No, you do not know what I am talking
about, my dear. And--well, anyhow, I belong to Patricia. Upon the whole,
I am glad that I belong to Patricia; for Patricia and what Patricia
meant to me was the one vital thing in a certain person's rather
hand-to-mouth existence--oh, yes, in spite of everything! I know it now.
Anne Charteris," the colonel cried, "I wouldn't marry you or any other
woman breathing, even though you were to kneel and implore me upon the
knees of a centipede. For I belong to Patricia; and the rivet stays
unbroken, after all."

"Oh, and am I being very foolish again?" Anne asked. "For I have been
remembering that when--when Jack was not quite truthful about some
things, you know,--the truth he hid was always one which would have hurt
me. And I like to believe that was, at least in part, the reason he hid
it, Rudolph. So he purchased my happiness--well, at ugly prices perhaps.
But he purchased it, none the less; and I had it through all those
years. So why shouldn't I--after all--be very grateful to him? And,
besides"--her voice broke--"besides, he was Jack, you know. He belonged
to me. What does it matter what he did? He belonged to me, and I loved
him."

And to the colonel's discomfort Anne began to cry.

"There, there!" he said, "so the real truth is out at last. And tears
don't help very much.