.

"Exit, the villain"--Gibson's last words--echoed in his brain.

He imagined he heard Brennan saying: "A grandstander, a grandstander to
the last."

When he finally turned around, Consuello was standing by the open
casement window, looking out into the night, her fingers touching the
petals of the geraniums on the sill, in the same position in which she
had stood when she had recited to him the little verse with its simple,
homely philosophy.

He moved to her side, marveling at her unaffected beauty.

Looking out of the window he saw that the moon, which had been hidden by
the clouds an hour before, had crested her "green and friendly hill"
with an outline of silvery-blue.

Something in her pose that suggested to him that she was waiting for him
to speak gave him the courage. Yet he was afraid to look at her as he
spoke, afraid to see what effect his words had upon her.

"I do--love you," he said.

That little gasp as she caught her breath, what did it mean? Still
unable to face her, he continued:

"He knew it; Betty knows it; mother knows it and I want the whole world
to know it--I love you." He could say no more.

Gently, caressingly, her small white fingers touched his unbandaged
hand. Tremulously he turned his head and saw her answer in her eyes and
slowly, almost reverently, he lifted her hand to his lips. A mocking
bird broke into joyous song in a tree outside, a golden flood of music
to mock the silent song in his heart.

* * *

Lights were shining through the curtains on the windows of the Sprockett
house and his mother was waiting up for him when he returned home. As he
took her in his arms to kiss her forehead tenderly he had a fantasy that
the wonderfulness of his requited love had miraculously altered his
mother's opinion of Consuello. But it was a fantasy, only that.

"Mother, dearest," he whispered, "I'm the happiest man in the world,
tonight."

His mother drew back from him and the intuition that had advised her
that her son was in love with Consuello, long before he realized it
himself, told her the reason for his happiness. She turned away and
pressing a handkerchief to her eyes left him with a discordant note
breaking the harmony of his ecstasy.

CHAPTER XXV

A doctor is awarded his diploma; a lawyer is admitted to the bar; a
preacher is given a pulpit; an actor rises from understudy to the
leading role; a newspaper reporter is given a "by-line"