Presently it came.
"It is awfully good of you, Miss Champion, to take the trouble to think all this and to say it to me.

May I prove my gratitude by explaining for once where my difficulty lies?
I have scarcely defined it to myself, and yet I believe I can express it to you." Another long silence.

Garth smoked and pondered.
Jane waited.

It was a very comprehending, very companionable silence.
Garth found himself parodying the last lines of an old sixteenth-century song: "Then ever pray that heaven may send Such weeds, such chairs, and such a friend." Either the cigarette, or the chair, or Jane, or perhaps all three combined were producing in him a sublime sense of calm, and rest, and well-being; an uplifting of spirit which made all good things seem better; all difficult things, easy; and all ideals, possible.

The silence, like the sunset, was golden; but at last he broke it.
"Two women--the only two women who have ever really been in my life--form for me a standard below which I cannot fall,--one, my mother, a sacred and ideal memory; the other, old Margery Graem, my childhood's friend and nurse, now my housekeeper and general tender and mender.