But when Isabel told her how deeply my anger against Frank had eaten into my very soul, destroying my gift of healing and coming between me and my God, Fay realised that there was far more at stake than just the relations between herself and me. The salvation of my soul was hanging in the balance, and it was for her dear hands to adjust the scales. With an insight beyond her years, she understood that before I could find peace I must forgive Frank, believing him to be alive: the easy forgiveness which we accord to the dead, who can no longer hurt or be hurt by us, was not the thing that was demanded of me. I was called upon to forgive Frank fully and freely, even although I believed that it was through him that my darling had gone to her death, and that therefore there was no possibility of her ever coming back to me, or of the wrong which he had done me ever being rectified.
This my darling enabled me to do, and thereby saved my soul alive.
And now we are once more all in all to each other; and the love that is stronger than death can lighten even the long shadows cast by the Great War.
I do not think there is any more to add to my story, save the interesting fact that we have christened our first-born son Francis.
At present he finds his sole occupation in mewling and puking in his nurse's arms; but his beloved mother and I have every reason to hope that eventually he will learn to employ his time with more profit both to himself and to the world at large.
I think that some day "Sir Francis Kingsnorth" will be quite an effective name and sound very well indeed. But I shall not be there to hear it.
THE END