The man stood back and covered the portrait, then, when the girl had seated herself before the easel, he stepped forward, and laid his hand on the covering. He hesitated a moment, and his fingers on the blank canvas trembled. He was unveiling the effort of his life, and to him she was the world. If he had failed! Then, with a deft movement, he lifted the concealing canvas, and waited.
For a moment, the girl looked with bated breath, then something between a groan and a stifled cry escaped her. She turned her eyes to him, and rose unsteadily from her seat. Her hands went to her breast, and she wavered as though she would fall. Saxon was at her side in a moment, and, as he supported her, he felt her arm tremble.
“Are you ill?” he asked, in a frightened voice.
She shook her head, and smiled. She had read the love-letters, and she had read, too, what silence must cost him. Other persons might see only wonderful art in the portrait, but she saw all the rest, and, because she saw it, silence seemed futile.
“It is a miracle!” she whispered.
The man stood for a moment at her side, then his face became gray, and he half-wheeled and covered it with his hands.
The girl took a quick step to his side, and her young hands were on his shoulders.
“What is it, dear?” she asked.
With an exclamation that stood for the breaking of all the dykes he had been building and fortifying and strengthening through the past months, he closed his arms around her, and crushed her to him.
For a moment, he was oblivious of every lesser thing. The past, the future had no existence. Only the present was alive and vital and in love. There was no world but the garden, and that world was flooded with the sun and the light of love. The present could not conceivably give way to other times before or after. It was like the hills that looked down—unchangeable to the end of things!