“I’ll be good,” said Oldmeadow. It was like saying one’s prayers at one’s mother’s knees and his lips found the child-like formula.
“We must part,” said Adrienne. “I have my life and you have yours and they take different ways. But you won’t be without me, I won’t be without you. How can we be, when we will never, never forget each other and our love?”
He looked up at her. He had put out his hands and they grasped her dress as a donor in a votive altarpiece grasps the Madonna’s healing garment. It was not, he knew, to keep her. It was rather in an accepting relinquishment that he held her thus for their last communion, receiving through touch and sight and hearing her final benison.
“I will think of you every day, until I die,” she said. “I will pray for you every day. Dear friend—dearest friend—God bless and keep you.”
She had stooped to him and for a transcending moment he was taken into her strong, life-giving embrace. The climax of his life was come as he felt her arms close round him and her kiss upon his forehead. And as she held him thus he believed all that she had said and all for which she could have found no words. That he should find the light and more and more feel their unity in it: that the thought of her would be strength to him always; as the thought of him and of his love would be strength to her.
After she had gone, he sat for a long time bathed in the sense of her life, and tasting, for that span of time, her own security of eternal goodness.
THE END
Typographical error was corrected by the etext transcriber:
“Adriennes mustn’t fail,” said Mrs. Averil dryly. “The only justification for Adriennes is to be in the right. => “Adrienne mustn’t fail,” said Mrs. Averil dryly. “The only justification for Adrienne is to be in the right. {pg 241}