They had spent the evening together on the highest possible plane of religious exaltation, and it was Mervyn who gripped his brother's hand and said "Courage!" out of the fulness of his emotion. His face looked almost saintly as he said it.
An hour later, indeed, when Morris--who had lingered near the dying fire, beset, now he was alone, by almost unbearable grief--looked in to see if his brother were asleep, he found him lying like a child, smiling in his dreams.
Morris gave a faint sob, and Mervyn stirred in his sleep. "Mother," he said hurriedly, softly--"Mother, dear, dear mother--I must."
Instinctively Morris blew out the light he held, lest it might wake the dreamer from his dream; so in the moonlight he stood, torn asunder by love and grief, watching the dim peaceful form upon the bed.
Suddenly he turned and, closing the door silently behind him, went downstairs once more. Outside the narrow walls of the house, the moonlight slumbered peacefully upon the everlasting hills. Surely somewhere beyond the narrow walls of this world's judgment slept eternal Peace.
An instant afterwards the front door closed softly, and Morris Pugh, leaving his brother asleep, had gone to find wisdom where he had often sought it of late in the temple not made with hands.
It must have been an hour later that Mervyn woke, roused by a pebble at his window. He sat up with blurred consciousness, wondering vaguely what it was, until another pebble struck the pane, and a voice cried in a soft whisper, "Mervyn!"
Myfanwy! by all that was strange! Then in a second the whole memory of what had happened came back to him; but it came back to find him, as it were, a giant refreshed with sleep. None of us are really the same for two consecutive hours, and many a man will brave that in the morning, from which he would shrink at night. And there, as he peered through the curtain, was Myfanwy, sure enough, beckoning to him to come down. A sight sufficient to bring combativeness to any young blood, even without those two hours of blessed rest in sleep.
"Mervyn," she said, when five minutes after, their lips met in a long kiss; "I have come for you. See how I love you, to do this thing which might ruin any poor girl's reputation. You have done wrong, my poor boy, very wrong; but so have many of the others who are so saintly. And why should you stay to be prayed over by them--by Alicia Edwards too! I will not have it! There will be no more me if you stop, Mervyn. Come now with me to Blackborough, the waggonette is waiting up the road at the bridge; we can catch the three o'clock mail at Llanilo. If you come, Mervyn, I will marry you in three days at the registrar's office."
"But," he gasped, half-drunk with her kisses, half-stunned by his remembrances.