After reading that strange confession, Lilith sat in a trance of delight so rapt that in it she forgot every source of trouble to herself.
Now the guiltless was vindicated. Now the secret that had weighed her young life almost down to death might be told. Now the sorely persecuted yet withal light-hearted and joyous exile and wanderer might return to his own a free and justified man.
But where was he?
Lilith did not know. She could not even conjecture. He might not be living. He was young, indeed, but life is uncertain at all ages, and his was a very careless and adventurous life.
It was now more than eighteen months since Lilith had heard from him.
On that fatal March 21st, when her husband had driven her away, she had received a letter from the wanderer, saying that he was en route for Chicago, and appointing the Personal column of the Pursuivant as the medium of their correspondence.
But after having been banished by her husband on account of this very wanderer, whose sacred claim on her he could not understand, Lilith had conscientiously abstained from using the Personal column of the Pursuivant for opening any communication with the banned exile.
Indeed, as it will be remembered, Lilith had never sought intercourse by letter or otherwise with the mysterious stranger who laid so much stress upon his natural right to her duty. In every case it was he who had sought her, often to her great peril, and always to her distressing embarrassment.
But, though Lilith had abstained from all attempts to open a correspondence with him, yet she had regularly searched the papers for any possible news of the poor stroller, but without success.
At first she had wondered much at his utter silence, but since hearing the report of her own death she understood that silence; she knew that he believed in the truth of that report. Yet still she had not sought to communicate with him, even for the purpose of announcing her continued existence, though she knew what joy such news must bring to his lonely heart. Her fidelity to the husband who had repudiated her was so perfect!