I sat down on the piazza to watch with those who were watching with the child. I made up my mind that I certainly should not retire until the physician departed; and in my present mood I felt that my midsummer night's dream would be to me more interesting than that of Will Shakespeare. Hour after hour passed almost unnoted. The night became serene and beautiful. The moon, like a confident beauty, at last threw aside her veil of clouds, and smiled as if assured of welcome. Raindrops gemmed every leaf; and when the breeze increased, myriads of them sparkled momentarily through the silver light. As morning approached the air grew so sweet that I recognized the truth that the new flowers of a new day were opening, and that I was inhaling their virgin perfume.
I rose and went softly to the ivy-covered gateway of the old garden, and the place seemed transfigured in the white moonlight. Even the kitchen vegetables lost their homely, prosaic aspect. I stole to the lilac-bush, and peered at the home that had been roofless through all the wild storm. My approach had been so quiet that the little brown mother sat undisturbed, with her head under her wing; but the paternal robin, from an adjacent spray, regarded me with unfeigned surprise and alarm. He uttered a note of protest, and the mother-bird instantly raised her head and fixed on me her round, startled eyes. I stole away hastily, smiling to myself as I said:
"Both families will survive unharmed, and both nests are safe."
I went to the spot where I had stood with Emily Warren at the time I had half-jestingly, half-earnestly indulged my fancy to reproduce a bit of Eden-like frankness. Under the influence of the hour and my mood I was able to conjure up the maiden's form almost as if she were a real presence. I knew her far better now. With her I had passed through an ordeal that would test severely the best and strongest. She had been singularly strong and very weak; but the weakness had left no stain on her crystal truth, and her strength had been of the best and most womanly kind. As in the twilight, so in the white moonlight, she again made perfect harmony in the transfigured garden.
"There is but one woman in the world for me," I murmured, "as truly as there was only one for the first lonely man. I know not how it is with her, but I hope—oh, what would life now be to me without this hope!—that she cannot have inspired this absolute conviction that she is essential to my being without some answering sympathy in her own woman's heart. But whether this is true or not, or whether it ever can be true, I have met my fate."
As I returned from the garden I saw that the dawn was coming, and I sat down and watched it brighten with the feeling that a new and happy life was also coming.