Her smile was of the kind which stands half-way in the path to tears, but she spoke bravely to the doubt in his reply.
"You do believe, Tom, dear; you have never seen the moment when you did not. It was the doubt that was unreal. When the supreme test came, it was God's hand that restrained you; you know it now—you knew it at the time. And afterward it was His grace that enabled you to do what was just and right. Haven't you admitted all this to yourself?"
They had crossed the white pike to the manor-house gates and were turning aside from the driveway into the winding lawn path when he said:
"To myself, and to one other." Then, very softly: "I sat at my mother's knee last night, Ardea, and told her all there was to tell."
Ardea's eyes were shining. "What did she say, Tom, dear—or is it more than I should ask?"
"There is nothing you may not ask. She said—it wasn't altogether true, I'm afraid—but she put her arms around my neck and cried and said: For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found."
She slipped her arm in his, and there was a little sob of pure joy at the catching of her breath. The moon was just rising above the Lebanon cliff-line, and the beauty of the glorious night-dawn possessed her utterly. Ah, it was a good world and a generous, bringing rich gifts to the steadfast! Instinctively she felt that Tom's little confession did not require an answer; that he was battling his way to the heights which must be taken alone.
So they came in the sacred hush of the young night to a great tulip-tree on the lawn, and where a curiously water-worn limestone boulder served as a rustic seat wide enough for two whose hearts are one they sat down together, still in the companionship that needs no speech. It was Tom who first broke the silence.
"I have been trying ever since that night last winter to feel my way out," he said slowly. "But what is to come of it? I can't go back to the boyhood yesterdays; in a way I have hopelessly outgrown them. Let us admit that religion has become real again; but Ardea, girl, it isn't Uncle Silas's religion, or—or my mother's, or even yours. And I don't know any other."
She laid a hand on one of his.