With the going of Crane an awkward restraint came over the two who were
left; the man who had suffered so much for the woman's sake, and the
girl who had endeavored so much.
He was like a man suddenly thrust into a new world of freedom; he
indulged in a physical manifestation of its exhilaration, drinking in
a long, deep draught of the clover-scented air, until his great lungs
sighed with the plethora. It seemed a lifetime that he had lived in the
noisome atmosphere of a felon's cell. But now the crime had dropped from
him; a free man in every sense of the word, he could straighten himself
up and drink of the air that was without taint.
Allis watched Mortimer curiously; she was too happy to speak--just to
look upon him standing there, her undefiled god, her hero, with his
heroism known and applauded, was a suffusing ecstasy. He was so
great, so noble, that anything she might say would be inane, tawdry,
inconsequent; so she waited, patiently happy, taking no count of time,
nor the sunshine, nor the lilt of the birds, nor even the dissolution of
conventionality in the unsupervised tete-a-tete.
The ecstatic magnetism of congenial silence has always a potency, and
its spell crept into Mortimer's soul and laid embargo on his tongue. He
crossed over to Allis, and taking her slender hand in his own, crouched
down on the floor beside her chair, and looked up into her face, just
as a great St. Bernard might have done, incapable of articulating the
wealth of love and gratitude and faithfulness that was in his heart.
Even then the girl did not speak. She drew the man's strong rugged head
close up to her face, and nestled her cheek against his. Love without
words; love greater than words. It was like a fairy dream; if either
spoke the gentle gossamer web of it would float away like mist, and of
needs they must talk of the misery that had passed.
In the end the girl spoke first, saying like a child having a range of
but few words, “You are happy now, my hero?”
“Too happy--I almost fear to wake and find that I've been dreaming.”
She kissed him.
“Yes, it's real,” he answered; “in dreams happiness is not so positive
as this. You did not doubt?” he queried.
“Never.”
“You would have waited?”
“Forever.”
“And now--and now, we must still wait.”
“Not forever.”
They talked of the wonderful necromancy the gods had used to set their
lives to the sweet music of happiness. How Lauzanne the Despised had
saved Ringwood to her father; how he had won Alan's supposed price of
redemption for Mortimer; how he had stood sturdy and true to the girl
of much faith and all gentleness. And the room became a crypt of
confessional when she, in penitence, told of her ride on the gallant
Chestnut.
Just a span of Fate's hand from these two happy mortals, and twice
the sand had sifted through the hour glass, sat a man all alone in his
chamber. On his table was the dust of solitariness; and with his finger
he wrote in it “Forever.” But he looked fearlessly across the board, for
there sat no grinning demon of temptation, nor remorse, nor fear. But a
fragrance as of lilacs and of sweet clover coming through an open window
was in his nostrils; and in his memory was the picture of a face he
loved, made like unto an angel's with gratitude, and on his forehead
still burned, like a purifying fire, a kiss that reached down into his
soul and filled him with the joy of thankfulness.