Then she faced the fact she had been trying all day not to recognize.
It was David's birthday!
She admitted it now, and even had the courage to go back over the ways they had celebrated the day in former years; at first she held to the old idea that these recollections made her suffer, but presently she perceived that it was not so. Had her help come from the hills, as Karl had told her it would?
She sat so still that she could hear the ashes falling in the fireplace--so still that the ticking of her watch on the dressing-table teased her ears. She seemed to be listening for something--for something beautiful and solemn. And by and by the thing she had been waiting for came.
It swept into the house as if all the doors and windows had been thrown wide to receive it. It was as invisible as the wind, as scentless as a star, as complete as birth or death. It was peace--or forgiveness--or, in a white way, perhaps it was love.
Suddenly she sprang to her feet.
"David!" she cried. "David! Oh, I believe I understand!"
She went to her desk, and, as if she were compelled, began to write. Afterward she found she had written this:--
"DEAR DAVID:--
"It is your birthday, and I, who am so used to sending you a present, cannot be deterred now. Oh, David, my husband, you who fathered my children, you, who, in spite of all, belong to me, let me tell you how I have at last come, out of the storm of angers and torments of the past year, into a sheltered room where you seem to sit waiting to hear me say, 'I forgive you.'
"That is my present to you--my forgiveness. Take it from me with lifted hands as if it were a sacrament; feed on it, for it is holy bread. Now we shall both be at peace, shall we not? You will forgive me, too, for all I did not do.
"We are willful children, all of us, and night over-takes us before we have half learned our lessons.
"Oh, David--"
She broke off suddenly. Something cold seemed to envelop her--cold as a crevasse and black as death. She gave a strangled cry, wrenched the collar from her throat, fighting in vain against the mounting waves that overwhelmed her.