He came with great strides through the old ghost-like trees, whose withered boughs still held the swelling promise of the year's growth. He caught her in his arms, without a word. But she, like a child, clinging to him, cried, complaining:
"Oh, Harry, how late you are! Oh, how I have waited!"
"And I! ..." he made answer, almost inaudibly. "Eight years!"
His lips were on her eyelids as he spoke.
At this she dropped her head upon his breast, hiding her face; but he could see the crimson creep to the edge of the lace kerchief. There was a slackening of her arms about him, almost as if she would have knelt at his feet—there, in the lonely bare orchard.
He kept her close with his embrace; he had to stoop to hear her stammered words:
"Forgive—I have been shamed."
"Ah, hush!" cried he, quickly, his low voice vibrating with that tenderness for which there is no utterance. "Need there be this between us? Would I be here if I did not understand—if I did not know? ... The music is mine, at last—the music, Rosamond, that you kept silent, even from me. It is mine, at last—this is our wedding-day—the rest is nothing."
He raised her quivering face and looked into her eyes, deep, deep. The kerchief fell back from her white hair; the perfume from the fading rose was wafted to his nostrils.
"Oh, my white rose!" he cried, and passionately kissed the blanched head. "Oh, my red, red rose ... your lips, at last, at last, Rose of the World!"