Here she broke down, and he comforted her in his slow, stolid fashion.
"Honor, you are all the best part of me—the best thing that my life has known, or can know. Pray that the time to come may shine brighter seen against gloom gone. I've never doubted your motives—never. I've only lived in torment, because—there, don't be unhappy any more. I could do great things—great things for sheer thanksgiving. I must try to pay the world back in coin for this sunrise. The rest will be easy now you have spoken. Thought can cut the knot that remains, and I will take deep thought for all of us. Nothing is left to hurt us; think of that! Here's a solid foundation to work upon, now that you have decided to be my wife."
"What shall you do, Myles?"
"Think of him, and study how best to take you out of his life with least wound to him. I can be sorry for him now."
"His life is to live as well as ours."
"He must learn how to live it; but not from me. Sleep now, my own woman, again. Leave me to think out the rest. You don't know what this return means to me; I can't find the words to thunder out such a heart-deep thing. I feel as I felt when first you promised to marry me. I am waking out of a long chaos into peace."
Honor answered him, and their conversation presently grew disjointed as slumber stole over her weary brain. She sighed once or twice—the shaken sigh that follows upon tears—then her hand, that held his, relaxed and fell away. But Stapledon did not sleep. A thousand blind alleys of future action he followed, and countless possible operations pursued to barriers of difficulty.
At dawn he arose, and, leaving unconscious rest to repair the fret and turmoil of his wife's mind, pressed on to new problems. For the storm-cloud of his sorrows was touched with light; the ragged soul-garden within him spread smoothed and purged of deep-rooted weeds. He found space for wholesome seed therein, and passing into the air breathed wordless prayers upon the pure morning and opened his heart to the warmth of the sunrise fires.
CHAPTER XII.
PEACE