It was Tommy's proposal, but he did not
go to flee from temptation; however his worse nature had been stirred
and his vanity pricked, he was too determinedly Grizel's to fear that
in any fierce hour he might rush into danger. He wanted Grizel to come
away from the place where she always found so much to do for him, so
that there might be the more for him to do for her. And that week was
as the time they had spent there before. All that devotion which had
to be planned could do for woman he did. Grizel saw him planning it
and never admitted that she saw. In the after years it was sweet to
her to recall that week and the hundred laboriously lover-like things
Tommy had done in it. She knew by this time that Tommy had never tried
to make her love him, and that it was only when her love for him
revealed itself in the Den that desire to save her pride made him
pretend to be in love with her. This knowledge would have been a great
pain to her once, but now it had more of pleasure in it, for it showed
that even in those days he had struggled a little for her.
We must hasten to the end. Those of you who took in the newspapers a
quarter of a century ago know what it was, but none of you know why he
climbed the wall.
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