The Shadow of the Past - F. E. Mills Young

“It’s finished anyway,” he said abruptly. “I’m glad you know.”

He stole a look at her quiet face.

“There is a dark shadow,” he went on presently, “that lies across this land—the shadow of discontent and racial prejudice. That will pass away eventually—from the minds of many it has passed already. I have heard it described as the shadow of the past. Across the lives of numberless people some such shadow falls. They pass, these shadows.”

She stretched out a hand and found his advanced to meet it. He pressed her fingers warmly.

“It isn’t any sort of use to pretend that it hasn’t mattered to me,” he said; “but it belongs to the past now. I can look ahead to the future with a glad confidence... You aren’t afraid to trust your future in my keeping?”

She looked up in his face with a smile lighting the earnest eyes, and answered simply:

“I’ve never been afraid of shadows, Guy... And I love you. Love and trust are inseparable.”

She drew her hand away from his and leaned back against the cushions and was silent for a while, listening to the hum of the streets and the soft rustle of the night wind as it blew in through the open windows and fanned her face. Hers was not a jealous temperament; but she realised, and felt sad in the knowledge, that in the years that lay ahead she would have her husband’s love to win. The heart which waits and trusts and gives generously reaps a full reward.