"You!" she said. "It's like—heaven——"
"It is heaven—now," he answered, as he held her closely.
When Mary was well again, the curé married her to her Prince, and the two went together into the desert that Vanno loved. There it did not matter to them that Angelo was thinking coldly and harshly of them both; and perhaps there was even an added sweetness in Mary's happiness because a sacrifice of hers could spare pain to one very near to Vanno. She would not let her husband say that he could not forgive his brother.
"But if our love is to be perfect, we must forgive Angelo, and poor Marie too," she told him.
Late in the summer (they had left Egypt long ago, and were in the high mountains of Algeria), one day a letter came to Vanno, forwarded on from place after place, where it had missed him. Angelo had written at last.
"Perhaps you may have seen," he said, "in some paper, that in giving me a little daughter my wife died. She left a letter to be handed me after her death, if a presentiment she had were fulfilled. If she had lived, I would have forgiven her. Will you and Mary forgive me?"
There was no question as to what their answer would be.
"When two people love each other as we do," Vanno said, "I see now that there can be no room for any bitterness in their hearts."