nly known!
My darling, why didn't you come to me then? Why didn't you? I had
plenty. Why didn't you send for me?"

"How could I?"

"You could, you could--"

"But sweetest, I didn't even know where you were."

"Wherever I was I would have come to you. I would have taken you
away."

"It was worth it, Lucy. If it hadn't been for that, I shouldn't be
here now. Looking back it seems positively glorious. And whatever it
was I'd go through years of it, for one hour with you here. One of
those hours even when you didn't love me."

"I've always loved you, all my life long. Only I didn't know it was
you. Do you remember my telling you that your dream was divorced from
reality? It wasn't true. That was what was wrong with me."

"I'm afraid I wasn't always very faithful to my dream."

"Because your dream wasn't always faithful to you. And yet it _was_
faithful."

"Lucy, do you remember the things I told you? Can you forgive me for
being what I was?"

"It was before I knew you."

"Yes, but after? That was worse; it was the worst thing I ever did,
because I _had_ known you."

She wondered why he asked forgiveness of her now, of all moments; and
as she wondered the light dawned on her.

"I forgive you everything. It was my fault. I should have been there,
and I wasn't."

Then he knew that after all she had understood. Her love was in her
eyes, in their light and in their darkness. They gathered many flames
of love into that tender tragic gaze, all pitying, half maternal.
Those eyes had never held for him the sad secrets of mortality. Love
in them looked upon things invisible, incorruptible; divining, even as
it revealed, the ultimate mystery. He saw that in her womanhood Nature
was made holy, penetrated by the spirit and the fire of God. He knelt
down and laid his face against her shoulder, and her arm, caressing,
held him there, as if it were she who sheltered and protected.

"Keith," she whispered, "did you mean to marry me before you came this
time, or after?"

"Before, oh before."

"You thought--that terrible thing had happened to me; you thought you
would always have me dragging on you? And yet you came? It made no
difference. You came."

"I came because I wanted to take care of you, Lucy. I wanted nothing
else. That was all."

Lucia's understanding was complete.

"I knew you were like that," said she; "I always knew it."

She bent towards his hidden face and raised it to her own.

***END OF TH