The younger woman went only a few steps down the aisles, keeping as far away from him as possible. Whenever she glanced towards him she found his eyes fixed upon her, following her everywhere; and now it was not pity she thought she saw in his look, but love—the same love she had seen in those eyes the last time they two had stood face to face.
When the tambourines had been extended towards everybody in the hall, the two women went back to the platform and the adjutant counted up the money—coppers and nickels, most of it, and not two dollars in all.
The captain kept on steadfastly. He gave out another hymn. When that had been sung, he turned to a portly man who had come in late and who was sitting on the platform behind Brother Higginson.
"Brother Jackman," he asked, with unction, "how is your soul to-night? Can't you tell us about it?"
While the portly man, standing uneasily with his hands on the chair before him, was briskly setting forth the circumstances of his assured salvation, Sister Miller was silent on the platform.
She could not help seeing Dexter Standish, who was straight in front of her. She noted how erect he was, and how resolutely his shoulders were squared. She saw that he was older, too; and she observed that his face had a masterful look, wanting there the last time she had seen him.
He had always been a fine-looking fellow, and the training at Annapolis had done him good. He was no mere youth now, but a man, bronzed and bearded, and bearing himself like one who knew what he wanted and meant to get it. She realized that the woman he chose to guard from the world would be well shielded. A weary woman might find rest under the shelter of his stalwart protection. Involuntarily she contrasted the man she had promised to marry with the man she had married—the manly strength of the one with the gentle weakness of the other. Then she blushed again, for this seemed to her disloyalty to the dead. Jim had been very good to her always; he was the father of her child; he never did any wrong. But the thought returned again—perhaps if he had had more force of character the child need not have died as it did.
Brother Jackman was rattling along glibly, but Sister Miller did not heed him. She did not hear him even. She did not hear anything distinctly during the rest of the service. She rose to her feet with the rest of them, and she sat down again automatically, and she knelt like one in a trance. When the meeting was over and the people began to disperse she saw that he did not move. He stood there silently, waiting for her to come to him, ready to bear her away. Without a word Sister Miller knew what it was her old lover wanted; he wanted to pick up their love-story where it had been broken off four years before.
When the hall was nearly empty he started towards her.
She turned to the gray-haired woman by her side.