"That is something, is n't it?" asked Donaldson almost pleadingly.
"Something? Something? It's everything. Don't you see now that you can't go away?"
"I see," he answered.
"Well, then, give me your hand again. Sort of trembly, eh? But I 'll bet you sleep better the rest of the night. And don't you on your life let her know I told you. She 's proud as the devil. But she would have done the same for me. They say love is blind," he laughed excitedly, "but, Holy Smoke, this is the worst case of it I ever saw!"
Donaldson lay passive.
"Now," concluded Arsdale, "I 'll go back and see if I can sleep. Good night."
Donaldson again lay flat on his back after Arsdale had gone. So he lay, not sleeping, merely enduring, until, almost imperceptibly at first, the dark about him began to dissolve. Then he rose, partly dressed, and sitting by the open window watched the East as the dawn stole in upon the sleeping city. It came to the attack upon the grim alleys, the shadows around buildings, the stealthy figures, like a royal host. A few gray outriders reconnoitred over the horizon line and sent scurrying to their hovels those who looked up at them from shifty eyes. Then came a vanguard in brighter colors with crimson penants who attacked the fields and broad thoroughfares; then the King's Own in scarlet jackets and wide sweeping banners, bronze tinted, who charged the smaller streets and factory roofs, and finally the brave array of all the dazzling host itself, who hurled their golden, sun-tipped lances into every nook and cranny, awaking to life all save those whose souls were dark within.
In watching it Donaldson found the first relief in the long night. His own mind cleared with the dawn. The day broke so clean and fresh, so bathed in morning dew, that once again his mind, grown perhaps less active, clung in some last spasm to the present as when he had sat with Elaine at breakfast, part of the little Dutch picture. Without reasoning into the to-morrow, he felt as though this day belonged to him. As the sun rose higher and stronger, enveloping the world in its catholic rays, the night seemed only an evil dream. He was both stronger and weaker. He was swept on, unresisting, by the high flood of the new day. This world now before his eyes acknowledged nothing of his agony but came mother-like to ease his fretting. She would have nothing of the heavy tossings inspired by her sinister sister, the Night. She was all for clean glad spirits, all for new hopes. So he who had first frowned at it, who had then watched passively, now rose to its call.
He was entitled to this day, sang the tempter sun,—one big day out of all his life. The crisis would be no more acute upon the morrow and he might be stronger to meet it. This day was his and hers, and even the boy's. To accept it would be to shirk nothing; it would be only to postpone—to weave into the sombre grave vestments be was making for himself one golden thread. Arsdale's talk had removed the last vestige of hope. The worst had happened. Surely one gay interlude could add no burden. A day was always a day, and joys once lived could never be lost. Always in her life and in his this would remain, and since he had shouldered the other days as they had come to him, it seemed no more than right that he should take this. Not to do so would be but sorry self-imposed martyrdom.
Arsdale came in, still in his bathrobe, with brisk step and his face a-beaming.