An overwhelming shyness possessed Nina that night. She dined alone with
her husband, and found his silences even more oppressive than usual.
Yet, when she rose from the table, an urgent desire to keep him within
call impelled her to pause.
"Shall you be late to-night?" she asked him, stopping nervously before
him, as he stood by the open door.
"I am not going out to-night," he responded gravely."
"Oh!" Nina hesitated still. She was trembling slightly. "Then--I shall
see you again?" she said.
He bent his head.
"I shall be with you in ten minutes," he replied.
And she passed out quickly.
The night was still and hot. She went into her own little sitting-room
and straight to the open window. Her heart was beating very fast as she
stood and looked across the quiet square. The roar of London hummed
busily from afar. She heard it as one hears the rushing of unseen water
among the hills.
There was no one moving in the square. The trees in the garden looked
dim and dreamlike against a red-gold sky.
Suddenly in the next house, from a room with an open window, there rose
the sound of a woman's voice, tender as the night. It reached the girl
who stood waiting in the silence. The melody was familiar to her, and
she leant forward breathlessly to catch the words:
Shadows and mist and night,
Darkness around the way;
Here a cloud and there a star;
Afterwards, Day!
There came a pause and the soft notes of a piano. Nina stood with
clasped hands, waiting for the second verse. Her cheeks were wet.
It came, slow and exquisitely pure, as if an angel had drawn near to the
turbulent earth with a message of healing:
Sorrow and grief and tears,
Eyes vainly raised above;
Here a thorn and there a rose;
Afterwards, Love!
Nina turned from the open window. She was groping, for her eyes were
full of tears. From the doorway a man moved quietly to meet her.
"Hereford!" she said in a broken whisper, and went straight into his
arms.
He held her fast, so fast that she felt his heart beating against her
bowed head. But it was many seconds before he spoke.
"Do you remember the wishing-gate, Nina?" he said, speaking softly. "And
how you asked for a Deliverer?"
She stretched up her arms to clasp his neck without lifting her head.
She was crying and could not answer him.
He put his hand upon her hair and she felt it tremble.
"Has the Deliverer come to you, dear?" he asked her very tenderly.
He felt for her face in the darkness, and turned it slowly upwards. She
did not resist him though she knew well what was coming. Rather she
yielded to his touch with a sudden, passionate willingness. And so their
lips met in the first kiss that had ever passed between them.
Thus there came a Deliverer more potent than death into the heart of the
girl who had married for money, and made its surrender sweet.