As I cried out, I turned slightly and, for a moment, lost the picture.
It was changed when again I saw it; Randolph Chance was still there, but
he no longer advanced toward the vision wife--she had faded into mist; he
came slowly toward me. There was a beautiful look on his face--I cannot
describe it--it was too holy to translate into language; but I could feel
it vibrate through my being until it set my very soul a-quivering. I had
no power of resistance--no wish to resist. I almost think I went toward
him, and he was as real to me as if he were in the flesh. I could feel
him as he put his arm around my waist, and his face touched mine. The
vision child had melted away; and we two were alone; I knew my heart
then; I knew I loved this man.
It was all over in a few moments, but such moments as make an eternity,
for they wipe out the past, even as death blots out a life, and they
open a door to the future. Up to that time I had never thought that,
without my knowledge or intent, my heart could slip from me--had never
dreamed that I, whose life had always been most commonplace--I, who had
had my share of wooing, but had never felt an extra heart-beat because
of it--no, never dreamed that I, this _I_, so practical and sensible,
could be carried off my feet by a vision. A vision, was it? Yes, and yet
real, too real in some ways, since it revealed my innermost thought. A
vision! And yet, even now that it had melted into air, I was clinging to
it, and instead of resenting its startling revelation of self, was
dwelling upon it, and in it, with a delight beyond words.
I sat there in my study, my head bent, and my hands loosely clasped in
my lap, living it over and over again. Out of doors, the soft gray dusk
had hushed the tired world in its arms. Within, the stillness of night
had settled down upon the room. By and by the moon rose above the great
waters of the lake, and on shore the trees were casting silent, solemn
shadows, made visible by the soft, hazy light that lay between them.
Once in a while a bird uttered its night cry, or some little brooding
note, and over on the vine-clad gallery, Mrs. Thrush still crooned a
lullaby to her little child, who lay asleep--soft and warm, on her
mother-breast.
I was no longer lonely, no longer shut out from it all--there was the
bird on its nest; the little wife and mother in her home; and I--I was
very near them--akin to them. I had seen myself in _my_ home, with my
child, and my husband; I had felt his dear arms about me, and his dear
face close to mine. I was no longer an alien. I, too, had a place in
the heart of another.
Still I sat and dreamed, and even the ringing of my door-bell failed to
rouse me: but when I heard the maid say to someone:
"She has been downstairs to-night, but I think she has gone up now, and
I don't like to call her."