I'm ...

I'm..." He stammered and his voice broke, and he covered his face with his hands.
And instantly, with the maternal spirit that goes with all true womanly love ablaze in her heart, Alice went to him and put her arms about his neck and drew his head down on her shoulder.
And he left it there, with tears.
A little later they sat down again side by side, holding hands.
As Hosack had told himself, and Gilbert had just said, things seemed to be coming to a head.

At that moment Tootles was strung up to play her last card, Joan was being driven back by Harry from the cottage of "Mrs.Gray" and Martin, becalmed on the water, with an empty pipe between his teeth, was thinking about Joan.
Palgrave was comforted.

The making of his confession was like having an abscess lanced.

In his weakness, in his complete abandonment of affectation, he had never been so much of a man.
There was not to Alice, who had vision and sympathy, anything either strange or perverse in the fact that Gilbert had told his story and was not ashamed.