"Oh, no!" Anne said quickly and earnestly. "It was Lucas who worked the miracle, Doctor. The magic was his."
"Guess he wouldn't have done it single-handed," said Capper. "He'd been trying as long as I had known him, and he hadn't succeeded." He paused, looking at her with great kindness. Then: "My dear," he said, "you needn't be afraid to trust yourself to him. He will never let you down again."
Anne stood silent, but under his look a deep flush rose and overspread her face. She turned her eyes away.
Very gently Capper patted her shoulder. "You've made a man of him between you," he said. "Lucas has left the developing process to you."
"Ah!" she said wistfully, and that was all, for her eyes were suddenly full of tears.
She went to the door and stood there for several seconds. The voice of a nightingale thrilled through the silence. Was it only a year—only a year—since the veil had been rent from her eyes? Only a year since first her heart had throbbed to "the everlasting Wonder Song"? She felt as if eons had passed over her, as if the solitude of ages wrapped her round; and yet afar off, like dream music in her soul, she still heard its echoes pulsing across the desert. It held her like a charm.
Slowly her tears passed. There came again to her that curious sense of something drawing her, almost as of a voice that called. The garden lay still and mysterious in the moonlight. She caught its gleam upon a corner of the lake where it shone like a wedge of silver.
A few seconds she stood irresolute; then without word or backward glance she stepped down into the magic silence.