"It doesn't matter," added Crane. "I must go now. Good-bye, Miss Allis."

Turning to Mortimer he held out his hand.

"Good-bye, and long happiness to you both," he said; "I trust you will think kindly of me and poor Ca.s.s. I am sure we are sorry for what has been done."

As Crane went down the stairs he wondered why he had coupled himself with Ca.s.s. Was the difference so slight--had they been together in the same boat up to the point of that silly, fantastic dream. Perhaps they had.

XLVI

With the going of Crane an awkward restraint came over the two who were left; the man who had suffered so much for the woman's sake, and the girl who had endeavored so much.

He was like a man suddenly thrust into a new world of freedom; he indulged in a physical manifestation of its exhilaration, drinking in a long, deep draught of the clover-scented air, until his great lungs sighed with the plethora. It seemed a lifetime that he had lived in the noisome atmosphere of a felon's cell. But now the crime had dropped from him; a free man in every sense of the word, he could straighten himself up and drink of the air that was without taint.

Allis watched Mortimer curiously; she was too happy to speak--just to look upon him standing there, her undefiled G.o.d, her hero, with his heroism known and applauded, was a suffusing ecstasy. He was so great, so n.o.ble, that anything she might say would be inane, tawdry, inconsequent; so she waited, patiently happy, taking no count of time, nor the sunshine, nor the lilt of the birds, nor even the dissolution of conventionality in the unsupervised tete-a-tete.

The ecstatic magnetism of congenial silence has always a potency, and its spell crept into Mortimer's soul and laid embargo on his tongue. He crossed over to Allis, and taking her slender hand in his own, crouched down on the floor beside her chair, and looked up into her face, just as a great St. Bernard might have done, incapable of articulating the wealth of love and grat.i.tude and faithfulness that was in his heart.

Even then the girl did not speak. She drew the man's strong rugged head close up to her face, and nestled her cheek against his. Love without words; love greater than words. It was like a fairy dream; if either spoke the gentle gossamer web of it would float away like mist, and of needs they must talk of the misery that had pa.s.sed.

In the end the girl spoke first, saying like a child having a range of but few words, "You are happy now, my hero?"

"Too happy--I almost fear to wake and find that I've been dreaming."

She kissed him.

"Yes, it's real," he answered; "in dreams happiness is not so positive as this. You did not doubt?" he queried.

"Never."

"You would have waited?"

"Forever."

"And now--and now, we must still wait."

"Not forever."

They talked of the wonderful necromancy the G.o.ds had used to set their lives to the sweet music of happiness. How Lauzanne the Despised had saved Ringwood to her father; how he had won Alan's supposed price of redemption for Mortimer; how he had stood st.u.r.dy and true to the girl of much faith and all gentleness. And the room became a crypt of confessional when she, in penitence, told of her ride on the gallant Chestnut.

Just a span of Fate's hand from these two happy mortals, and twice the sand had sifted through the hour gla.s.s, sat a man all alone in his chamber. On his table was the dust of solitariness; and with his finger he wrote in it "Forever." But he looked fearlessly across the board, for there sat no grinning demon of temptation, nor remorse, nor fear. But a fragrance as of lilacs and of sweet clover coming through an open window was in his nostrils; and in his memory was the picture of a face he loved, made like unto an angel's with grat.i.tude, and on his forehead still burned, like a purifying fire, a kiss that reached down into his soul and filled him with the joy of thankfulness.