"God seems to have given me so much in this last hour," he said, "that nothing I could offer would appear generous after such a gift. It shall be all the year, if you wish it. I owe her that and more. But for her, perhaps, this would never have been."
He took her hand and pressed his lips to it.
"Good-night, sweetheart. And the day after to-morrow then, we tell her everything."
CHAPTER XXXIX
THE END OF THE LOOM
When the little door had closed behind them, the old lady stood with head inclined, listening to the sound of their footsteps. Then, creeping to the high window that looked over the Rio Marin,--that same window at which, nearly a year before, she had stood with her husband watching Jill's departure--she pressed her face against the glass, straining her eyes to see them to the end.
It was very dark. For a moment, as John helped Jill into the gondola, she could distinguish their separate figures; but then, the deep shadow beneath the hood enveloped them and hid them from her gaze. Yet still she stayed there; still she peered out over the water as, with that graceful sweeping of the oar, they swung round and swayed forward into the mystery of the shadow beyond.
To the last moment when, melting into the darkness, they became the darkness itself, she remained, leaning against the sill, watching, as they watch, who long have ceased to see. And for some time after they had disappeared, her white face and still whiter hair were pressed against the high window in that vast chamber, as if she had forgotten why it was she was there and stood in waiting for her memory to return.
Such an impression she might have given, had you come upon her, looking so lost and fragile in that great room. But in her mind, there was no want of memory. She remembered everything.
It is not always the philosopher who makes the best out of the saddest moments in life. Women can be philosophic; the little old white-haired lady was philosophic then, as she stood gazing out into the empty darkness. And yet, no woman is really a philosopher. To begin with, there is no heart in such matter at all; it is the dried wisdom of bitterness, from which the burning sun of reason has sucked all blood, all nourishment. And that which has no heart in it, is no fit food for a woman. For a woman is all heart, or she is nothing. If she can add two and two together, and make a calculation of it, then let her do it, but not upon one page in your life, if you value the paper upon which that life be written. For once she sees that she can add aright, she brings her pen to all else. The desire of power, to a woman who has touched it, is a disease.