"Oh, Baby, think of it!" she whispered in ecstasy to the unheeding morsel of life in her arms. "He is coming--actually coming! Nothing can delay him very long now."

But the slow days multiplied into weeks; and still he did not come; and the scanty news from Kashmir was not hopeful enough to be pa.s.sed on to her--yet. Then, as she grew stronger, and more openly bewildered at the silence and delay, Desmond decided to speak to her himself. And while the tale was still upon his lips, while Quita sat listening to it, white and tearless, his hand grasping her own, a merciful fate brought her an envelope quaveringly addressed in pencil, containing word of definite progress at last, and an a.s.surance that once he could set foot to ground nothing should hold him back.

Ten days later the message, "Starting this morning," flashed through s.p.a.ce to Dera Ishmael from Kashmir; and after that each hour brought him nearer. A second flash from Lah.o.r.e; a third from Jhung; and Desmond, sending on a spare horse, rode down to the Indus to meet his friend, in Oriental fashion, 'at the edge of the carpet.'

It was a gaunt, weather-beaten figure of a man that stepped out of the ferry-boat and grasped his hand; but there was that in his bearing and in his unshadowed eyes that told Desmond the chief of what he wished to know. For the rest, the greeting between them was of their race and kind.

"Well, old chap, how are you?"

"Deuced glad to see you back again."

"And--Quita?"

"Deuced glad also, I suspect."

"Uncommonly kind of you both keeping her all this while."

"Kind? It's been a privilege seeing so much of her. We shall grudge giving her up."

And Desmond bestowed a reflective glance on the man who guessed nothing of the revelation in store for him.

Their talk riding back to the station was fitful and fragmentary. All that remained to be said--and there was a good deal of it--would come out bit by bit, at odd moments, mainly under the influence of tobacco.

In the meantime, their mutual satisfaction went deeper than speech; and it was enough.

At the drawing-room door they parted.

"You'll find all you need in there, I think," Desmond said, on a note of profound understanding; and Lenox, putting a strong hand upon himself, pushed aside the heavy curtain and stood, at last, before his wife.

With a low cry, and arms outflung, she came to him; and that first rapture of reunion, of the heart's pa.s.sionate upheaval and revealing--the more intense for the muteness of it--was a rapture sacred to themselves alone; not to be pried upon or set down. Such moments--come they but once in a lifetime, to one among a hundred--are G.o.d's reiterate answers to the problem of creation. The man or woman who has pa.s.sed that way will never ask the soul's most withering question: To what end was I born? 'The rest may reason and welcome.'

They are of the few who know.

Lenox and Quita swept headlong, as it were, to the crest of a wave, dropped presently back to earth. Then he set her a little away from him, almost at arm's-length, the better to feast his eyes upon the sight of her; and so became aware of the subtle change perceptible in her letters:--some exquisite quality, the fruit of long waiting, crowned by the miracle of motherhood; an appreciable softening of the lips; a triumph of the essential woman over mere line and curve that brought her near to actual beauty. But it was the new depth and tenderness in her eyes that drew and held him; eyes luminous, as never before, with the pride, the exaltation, of a consummate self-surrender,--not of necessity, but of free choice, the woman's utmost gift to her own one lover and compeer in all the world; if so be that she is privileged to find him, and if so be that he himself aspires to the larger claim. Eldred Lenox had so aspired; and, in consequence, had attained. Her mute confession of it stirred him to speech.

"I believe I _have_ won the whole of you at last--you very woman," he said almost under his breath.

"And I know it," she answered in the same tone. "Do you remember saying that day you were angry: 'If you _will_ make it a case of mastery----!' Well, it is a case of mastery--absolute and permanent."

She spoke truth. At that moment, and indeed for many years after, she would have walked, at his bidding, into the heart of a furnace. He drew her close again.

"No, no, la.s.s. I hope it's a case of love and comradeship on an equal footing,--as you have seen it in this house; the rarest thing in the world between a man and woman."

Her smile brought into play the dimple that he loved.

"How one needs you at every turn, to keep the balance of things! But come over to my easel. I have something to show you."

Very deliberately she lifted the draperies that hid the picture, and a low sound broke from him. Then he stood gazing upon it,--absorbed, captivated; and whereas, a moment since, the woman had triumphed, now all the artist in her thrilled at his tribute of silence, knowing it for the highest praise.

"A bit of pure inspiration," he said at last. "It lives and breathes!"

"That is your doing, more than mine. And I am glad it pleases you; for it is a present, and--a confession!"

"You did it simply for me?"

"For who else, in earth or heaven, dear and dense one?" she demanded, laughing; and was effectually put to silence. "Wasn't it just like me to throw all my heart into a portrait of myself?" she added, as he released her.

"It was enchanting of you; that's all _I_ know. But see here, la.s.s, there must be no question of murdering half your personality on my account. I am grasping. I want both of you,--artist and woman."

"Dear heart, you've taken arbitrary possession of as many of me as there are! And indeed, I'd be puzzled to swear to the exact number. I seem to have let you in for three sorts of wives already! But seriously, Eldred, I have come to one conclusion in the long months I have had for thinking things over. I believe you were right in saying it might be best for me to give up painting men's portraits. Not altogether: I don't think I could, unless you insisted! But I won't make it a speciality, as I have done; and I'll be more circ.u.mspect in my methods, and in my choice of subjects. Will that do?"

He looked full at her for a moment; his keen eyes melting into wells of tenderness.

"My darling--what's come to you?" was all he said.

"A spirit of understanding, I hope," she answered sweetly. "But you'll find plenty of the old unreasonable Quita effervescing underneath!

_Par exemple_--on the heels of my great renunciation, the first thing I want to do is a portrait of Major Desmond for my dear Honor,--if I may?"

"If you may! What next?" But being a man and human, he was obviously gratified. "You could suggest nothing that would please me better.

You'll make a fine thing of it; and as for your methods, 'get inside'

Desmond for all you're worth. You'll do no harm in _that_ quarter!"

"Harm?" she flashed out, half indignant. "Has it ever, in all of your knowledge of me, gone as far as that?"

He could not lie to her; neither would he betray d.i.c.k.

"Did such a possibility never occur to you?" he suggested, evading direct reply.

But she was not to be thwarted.

"I asked you a question, _mon cher_."

"And that is my answer."

"A question is not an answer." Then intuition, and his evident discomfiture, enlightened her. "_Mon Dieu_, Eldred! Yon are never thinking--of d.i.c.k?"

He frowned. "What put that into your head?"

"Your manner; and something he wrote to me while he was away. You heard, of course? He said he had told you the good news."

"What good news? When?"

"Weeks ago. Before he came back off leave."

"I had no letter. Must have been mislaid while I was ill. What's up?

Has he got a command?"

"Yes. And better than that. He is going to be married."

"By Jove! That's first-rate. Good old d.i.c.k! But what was it he said to you?"