Grief had made him an interpreter. It was as he thought, the heart of the young woman, woman-like, had been groping about for mother-love. Memory had been busy, but had sent the heart of the woman back from groping amid the graves of Bozrah all weary, to nestle and rest on the breast of him that gave mother-love, and promised all else that loyal heart ere gave.
But all was not gloomful; the clouds were shot through and tinted by some light-rays.
“What if our forebodings prove untrue?”
Hope’s question was as a north wind to a desert noon.
Once the man bashfully questioned his spouse, with broken sentence that was half signs.
“Does Miriamne feel aught of reproach toward the great love, seemingly not far from utter selfishness, which enchanted to this peril?”
“Could Madonna reproach God when she felt the heart-piercing sword? To Him she submitted, no less do I in doing and suffering as He wills!”
It has been said a woman’s heart is complex, but this one’s was not now. It lay open, as a book, before her lover-husband. He saw no idol there but himself. Had there ever been hidden remembrance of some girlish love, some secret scar left by a romance, both burning and brief, it would have been opened or effaced now.
As she beheld her consort, this time more loved, if possible, than ever before, knightly, courtly and tender, alert and strong to help, lavish in caressing, she not only felt conquered, but filled with desire to surrender to the uttermost; for she joyed to place this man on the throne of her being next after God, supremely lord over all. So together they moved amid the flowers of Beulah-land, under the glorious lights of married love. She all compensated for the pangs the trying hour brought; he thrilled, as he ascended higher and higher from lover love to husband love, to that holy delight that comes to a man beginning to feel fatherhood, the gift of the woman his heart has enthroned. For a little time both were too happy to speak, so they let their thoughts wing their way upward to the eternities where hopes eternally blossom. She presently signaled him to draw close to her, then his clasped hands lay on her heart, and their lips met. She said nothing, yet by a sign-language well understood by each, plainly entreated him to tell her over and over, more and more, his inmost thought, that her heart knew full well already.