Beyond the rose garden, in one of the pointed red cedars down in the meadow, a thrush was singing; and it seemed to her, while she listened, that the song was in her own heart as well as in the bird's—that it was pouring from her soul in a rapture of wonder and delight.
"I can never be unhappy again," she answered. "The memory of this will be enough. I can never be unhappy again."
From the cedar, which rose olive black against the golden disc of the sun, the bird sang of hope and love and the happiness that is longer than grief.
"The end no one can see," he said, and—it may have been only because of the singing bird in her heart—she felt that the roughness of pain had passed out of his voice. Then, before she could reply, he asked hurriedly, "Has Letty spoken to you of her mother?"
"Yes, she talked of her the little while that I saw her."
"You think the child would be happier if she were here?"
For an instant she hesitated. "I think," she replied at last, "that it would be fairer to the child—especially when she is older."
"Her mother writes to her."
"Yes. I think Letty feels that she wishes to come home."
The bird had stopped singing. Lonely, silent, still as the coming night, the cedar rose in a darkening spire against the afterglow.