So Kate was coming!
He had cravenly rebuffed her, and she had borne the rebuff in silence.
Yet now that he needed her, she was coming. Ah, that was what women
meant to men. They were created for the comforting of them. He always
had known it, but he had impiously doubted them--doubted Her. Because
fortune had turned from him, he had turned from Her--from Kate
Barrington. He had imagined that she wanted more than he could give;
whereas, evidently, all she ever had wanted was to be needed. He had
called. She had answered. It had been as swift as telegraphy could make
it. And now he was driving to the station to meet her.
Life, it appeared, was just as simple as that. A man, lost in the
darkness, could cry for a star to guide him, and it would come. It would
shine miraculously out of the heavens, and his path would be made plain.
It seemed absurd that the horses should be jogging along at their usual
pace over the familiar road. Why had they not grown shining wings? Why
was the old station wagon not transformed, by the mere glory of its
errand, into a crystal coach? But, no, the horses went no faster because
they were going on this world-changing errand. The resuscitated village,
with the American litter heaped on the Italian dirt, looked none the
less slovenly because She was coming into it in a few minutes. The clock
kept its round; the sun showed its usual inclination toward the west.
But notwithstanding this torpidity, She was coming, and that day stood
apart from all other days.
That it was Honora's desperate need which she was answering, in no way
lessened the value of her response to him. His need and Honora's were
indissoluble now; it was he who had called, and it was not to Honora
alone that she was coming with healing in her hands.
He saw her as she leaped from the train,--tall, alert, green-clad,--and
he ran forward, sweeping his Stetson from his head. Their hands
met--clung.
"You!" he said under his breath.
She laughed into his eyes.
"No, _you_!" she retorted.
He took her bags and they walked side by side, looking at each other as
if their eyes required the sight.
"How is she?" asked Kate.
"Very bad."
"What is it?"
"The doorway to madness."
"You've had a specialist?"
"Yes. He wanted to take her to a sanatorium. I begged him to wait--to
let you try. How could I let her go out from my door to be cast in with
the lost?"
"I suppose it was David's death that caused it."
"Oh, yes. What else could it be?"
"Then she loved him--to the end."
"And after it, I am sure."
He led the way to the station wagon and helped her in; then brought her
luggage on his own shoulder.
"Oh," she cried in distress. "Do you have to be your own stevedore? I
don't like to have you doing that for me."
"Out here we wait on ourselves," he replied when he had tumbled the
trunk into the wagon. He seated himself beside her as if he were doing
an accustomed thing, and she, too, felt as if she had been there beside
him many times before.