“Edith! I've been such a fool!”
She turned, slid from her seat, and was kneeling also, with her arms thrown about his neck.
“Oh, Jack! You've come. Thank God! Thank God!”
And presently they stood, and his arms were still around her, and she was looking up into his face, with her hands on his shoulders, and saying “You've come to stay.”
“Yes, dear, forever.”
XXIV
The whole landscape was golden, the sea was silver, on that October morning. It was the brilliant decline of the year. Edith stood with Jack on the veranda. He had his grip-sack in hand and was equipped for town. Both were silent in the entrancing scene.
The birds, twittering in the fruit-trees and over the vines, had the air of an orchestra, the concerts of the season over, gathering their instruments and about to depart. One could detect in the lapse of the waves along the shore the note of weariness preceding the change into the fretfulness and the tumult of tempests. In the soft ripening of the season there was peace and hope, but it was the hope of another day. The curtain was falling on this.
Was life beginning, then, or ending? If life only could change and renew itself like the seasons, with the perpetually recurring springs! But youth comes only once, and thereafter the man gathers the fruit of it, sweet or bitter.