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The Friend Who Stood By
by
And there Cheveril reached out a hand and detained the girl beside him.
“That other fellow?” he said, in his quiet, half-humorous voice. “You didn’t tell me his name.”
“Oh, please!” she said tremulously.
He took her hands gently into his, and stood facing her. The moonlight was full in his eyes. They shone with a strange intensity.
“Do you remember,” he said, “how I once said to you that I was romantic enough to like to see a love affair go the right way?”
She did not answer him. She was trembling in his hold.
He waited for a few seconds; then spoke, still kindly, but with a force that in a measure compelled her:
“That is why I want you to tell me his name.”
She turned her face aside.
“I–I can’t!” she said piteously.
“Then I hold you to your engagement,” said Lester Cheveril, with quiet determination.
Her hands leapt in his. She threw him a quick uncertain glance.
“You can’t mean that!” she said.
“I do mean it,” he rejoined resolutely.
“But–but–” she faltered. “You don’t really want to marry me? You can’t!”
He looked grimly at her for a moment. Then abruptly he broke into a laugh that rang and echoed exultantly in the deep shadows behind them.
“I want it more than anything else on earth,” he said. “Does that satisfy you?”
His face was close to hers, but she felt no desire to escape. That laugh of his was still ringing like sweetest music through her soul.
He took her shoulders between his hands, searching her face closely.
“And now,” he said–“now tell me his name!”
Yet a moment longer she withstood him. Then she yielded, and went into his arms, laughing also–a broken, tearful laugh.
“His name is–Lester Cheveril,” she whispered. “But I–I can’t think how you guessed.”
He answered her as he turned her face upwards to meet his own.
“The friend who stands by sees many things,” he said wisely. “And Love is not always blind.”
“But you–you weren’t in love,” she protested. “Not when—-“
He interrupted her instantly and convincingly.
“I have always loved you,” he said.
And she believed him, because her own heart told her that he had spoken the truth.