Then, as they faced each other with looks of solemn question, Anna saw into the depth of the man’s strong spirit, and she was prepared for what would follow.
“That might have been,” he said very slowly, and as if he were pronouncing his own doom, “even that unspeakable joy; but I myself, my child, made it impossible. Do you no longer see the great gulf fixed between you and me?”
He was holding both her hands now, and his own were firm and steady, but his face reflected the stern agony of the moment, while that of Anna was white as death. A throbbing silence filled the room, and all the air seemed to vibrate with the fierce pulsations of their hearts, for in both the cry arose that their punishment, self-inflicted, was greater than they could bear.
Then calmness fell, for as with one consent their eyes met again, and each perceived the light of a final spiritual conquest, and the shadow of an ultimate renunciation.
Again, as once before, John Gregory said, “It is the end,” and thus, most quietly, they parted.
It was evening when Anna left Fraternia. As the road entered the woods where the valley widened to the plain, she turned and caught a last glimpse of the solitary light which shone from the lowly house on the river’s farther side.
Through all the years and changes which remained to her, never did Anna lose the vision of that light, shining apart in the high valley. But John Gregory she never saw again.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE