All the trivial details of their old life thronged back to him; struggle and poverty, birth and death, and the emptiness of the ensuing years yawned, chasm-like, before his feet. He was like a man suddenly recalled from the dead—a skeleton reclothed in flesh and reattuned to the changes of sensations. Yes, after eight years he was alive once more.
He entered the rectory, and in a few moments went in to dinner. To his surprise he found that he was hungry, and ate heartily. All instincts, even that for food, had quickened with the rebirth of emotion.
He drank his claret slowly, seeing Mariana seated across from him, and the vision showed her pale and still, as she had come to him the night of the storm, the snow powdering her hair. Then he banished the memory and invoked her image as he had seen her in the afternoon, wan and hollow-eyed, but faintly coloring and tremulous with passion. She would sit opposite him again, but not here.
He had a farm in the South, a valueless piece of land left him by a relative of his mother. It was there that they would go to begin life anew and to mend the faith that had been broken. He would till the land and drive the plough and take up the common round of life again—a life free from action as from failure, into which no changes might ring despair.
He left the table and went into his study, seating himself before the fire. The little dog, with that subtle perception of mental states possessed by animals, pressed his cold nose into the palm of his master's hand, whimpering softly, a wistful look in his warm, brown eyes. Then he lay down, and, resting his head upon his paws, stared into the fire—seeing in the flames his silent visions.
Anthony leaned back upon the cushions, and the face of Mariana looked at him from the vacant chair on the hearth-rug. The reddish shadows from the fire flitted across her features and across the slim, white hand that was half outstretched. He saw the slippered feet upon the rug and a filmy garment in her lap, as the work had fallen from her idle hands.
The maid came in with his coffee and he lighted his pipe. In a moment the bell rang and Ellerslie entered, his face flushed, his hands hanging nervously before him. He sat down in the chair, still warm from the vision of Mariana, and Father Algarcife looked at him with a sudden contraction of remorse. For the first time he winced before the glance of another—of a girlish-looking boy with a tremulous voice and an honest heart. He was looking into the fire when Ellerslie spoke.
"I want you to meet my mother," he said. "You know she is coming to town next week. She is very anxious to know you; I have written so often about you."
The other looked up.
"Next week—ah, yes," he responded. He was thinking that by that time he would have passed beyond the praise or blame of Ellerslie and his mother—he would be with Mariana.