"You?"
His grip almost hurt her. "My dear, my dear, I haven't believed in
things. How could I ... with all the facts that men like me have to deal
with? But when I faced ... losing you...! love's _got_ to be eternal..."
"Ridgeley."
"I won't ... lose you. Oh, I know. We've grown apart. I don't know how a
man is going to help it ... in this darned whirlpool.... But you've
always been right ... here.... I've felt I might ... have you, if I ever
had time ..." his voice broke.
"And I thought you didn't care."
"I was afraid of that, and somehow I couldn't get ... back ... to where
we began. I was always thinking I would.... And then this came....
"I always hated to kill the things that you believed, Anne. I thought I
had to be honest ... that it would be better for you to face the
truth.... But which one of us knows the Truth? Not a man among us. And I
came across this ... '_Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not
quickened except it die_....' We are all fools--the wisest of us...."
She held out her arms to him, and he gathered her close. She felt that
it had been a thousand years since she had prayed, yet she heard herself
speaking.... And when he laid her back upon her pillows, she was aware
that together they had approached some height from which they would
never again descend.
"I'll leave the door open," he said, as he left her. "I shall be
reading, and you can see the light."
It seemed as if the light from his room flooded the world. The four
posts of her bed once more were tipped with shining saints! She turned
on her pillow--beyond the garden, the grove of white birches was steeped
in celestial radiance.
"_My little sister, Death_," said good St. Francis.
With her hand under her cheek, she slept at last, as peacefully as a
child.