"With all there is of me."
A servant came just then to say the Judge was waiting.
"I will come at once," Evadne said courteously. Then she turned once more to John. "And what do you think of life?" she cried softly.
"Life!" he said, and there was a strange, exultant ring in his voice.
"Life is a beautiful possibility."
There was no time for more, but in the spirit realm of kinship no multitude of words is needed. Only a few moments had passed, yet in that little space two souls had met. What did it matter if the devious turnings of life should lead them far apart, or the barring gate of circumstance forever separate them? They had found each other!
"Pitty lady!—Nan loves oo, dear," and the child whom John held seated on the broad top rail of the gate, held up her rosy lips for a kiss.
Instinctively Evadne held out her hand to John. Spiritual ethics laugh at the conventionalities of time. "Good-bye," she said, "and thank you."
She looked back once to wave her hand to little Nan. John was standing as she had left him, one arm encircling the child who nestled close to him, while over his right shoulder the horse had thrust his handsome head. Always afterward she saw him so. It was a parable of what God had meant man to be.
* * * * *
Long after the sound of the carriage wheels had died away John stood motionless, beholding again as in a vision the earnest face and wonderful grey eyes. Then he stooped for his hat which had fallen to the ground when he had taken her hand in his. As he did so, he saw a dainty bit of lawn lying on the other side of the gate. He put his hand between the bars and caught it just as the breeze was about to blow it away. He looked at the name which was delicately traced in one corner with a strange sense of pleasure: Evadne.