She spoke then, as the wet lashes lifted for an instant and fell again.
“It's wonderful,” she whispered. “God's chance, Dave—together—from now on.”
Into his face came a great new light. Self-questioning and self-debate were gone. Teresa trusted him. He knew himself before God and his fellows henceforth an honest man. And he was rich—rich with a boundless, priceless love that would endure while life endured. Teresa! His lips pressed the white forehead, and the closed eyelids, and then her lips were warm upon his own—and then he was kneeling again, but now his arms were around her, folding her to him, and his head lay upon the pillow, and his cheek touched hers.
And presently Millman, coming up the stairs, paused abruptly on the landing, as, through the open doorway of the room that was just in front of him, his eyes fell upon Dave Henderson's kneeling figure. And he stood there. And Teresa's voice, very low, and as though she were repeating something, reached him. And creeping into Millman's gray eyes there came a light of understanding as tender as a woman's, and for a moment more he lingered there, and then he tiptoed softly away. And the words that he had heard seemed to have graven themselves deep into the great heart of the man, for, as he went slowly on down the hall, he said them over and over again to himself:
“From now on.... From now on....”