--it was
true--true--she did not love Thornton.

"Helena!" he cried--and stretched out his arms to her. "I thought, oh,
God, I thought that I had lost you--Helena!"

But she did not move.

"What does it matter to you whether I love Thornton or not?" she said
dully. "Does it change anything where you and I are concerned--does it
change what I told you this afternoon--that I would not go back to
_that_."

"To that! Ah, no!"--his voice rang dominant, vibrant, triumphant now.
"Helena, don't you understand? We are to begin life again--in a new
way, the true way, the only way. Don't you see--I love you!"

Still she did not move--but there was a great whiteness in her face, and
in the whiteness a great light.

"You mean?"--her lips scarcely seemed to form the words.

"Yes!" he cried. "Yes; to make a home for you, to marry you if only you
love me still, to live in God's own sight and hold you as a sacred
gift--Helena! Helena!"--his arms went out to her again, and the yearning
in his soul was in his voice--to crush her to him, to hold her in his
arms, and hold her there where none should take her from him, to shield
and guard her through the years to come, to live with her a life that
seemed to break now in a vista of gladness, of glory, as the day-dawn
breaks with its golden rays of God-given promise--the new life, perfect
and pure and innocent--because he loved her. "Helena! Speak to me. Tell
me that it is not too late--tell me that you love me too."

And then her eyes were raised to his, and they were wet--but there was
love-light and a wondrous happiness shining through the tears.

"Helena!" he murmured brokenly--and swept her into his arms--and kissed
the eyelids, lowered now, the hair, the white brow, the lips--kissed
her, and held her there, her clinging arms about his neck, her face half
hidden on his shoulder.

And so for a space they stood there--and there were no words to say,
only the song in their hearts in deathless melody--but after a little
time he held her from him, and lifted up her face that he might look his
fill upon it.

"Helena," he said, "I cannot understand it all yet--it is as though it
were born out of the sin and the darkness and the blackness of what is
gone--as though here at this Shrine that we created in mockery and crime
it was meant that you and I should save each other for each other. And
yet this Shrine as we have made it is a thing of guilt, and it has
brought us all, you and I,