"I'm here," she said aloud, but very low—"I'm here, Father."
But he was not there to answer her.
The lips which had smiled in dying had fallen stern, and the cheeks she kissed were of a bitter cold. She sank to her knees and laid her hands on his.
"Well, we loved each other, didn't we?" she said, and her swollen tears fell into the lips parted to speak to him. "We loved each other, didn't we?"
She knelt there, crying because he would not look at her, and, for the first time, had no kind word. It seemed impossible that she should go on living in a world without his voice, but she knew he had meant to silence it so that he might give her something else. And she was not, in truth, unhappy. She knew she was in the presence of a love infinitely greater than any death, enduring when even the signs of death had crumbled into dust and been gathered in to feed the eager body of earth, and by that love she was ennobled beyond grief.
She dried her tears, smoothed back the grey wisp of hair her breathing had disturbed, and went to the chair where Alexander had neatly laid her father's clothes. She thought there might be a letter for her there, but she found only the book of Shakespeare's sonnets which she had given him, and inside it the latest picture of herself and one of Nancy's youth.
She knelt by the widely opened window, and sensed the night. She thought his spirit must be out there among the hills he loved; that he saw her by the window, and could hear what she was telling him; knew what she was thinking, and felt the swamping pain of her regrets. She stretched her hands over the window-sill, forgetful of the figure on the bed, appealing only to the departed spirit companioning the stars.
"You need not have done it," she said, "if I hadn't been so proud. But I didn't tell you. Did you think you would never manage for us to meet? And all the time, all the time, I loved him. Oh, why did I not tell you? Forgive me, dear, forgive me. I was unfaithful to him and cruel to you, and now——But how could I reckon with anyone as good as you?" Her head drooped and rested on the woodwork, and she looked down the long avenue of people she had loved and hurt. She lifted her head and beat her hands upon the sill. "But I did love you, and you knew it—at least, I never failed in giving love."
A low tap came on the door, and she opened it to Alexander.
"Won't you come downstairs?"