“Stark wie der Fels,
Tief wie das Meer,
Muss deine Liebe,
Muss deine Liebe sein?”
“I remember! And it has been so?”
Her answer was to draw his hand up to her lips and print a kiss there, and as she laid her cheek upon it he felt it wet with tears.
And night came; and now the wind lay dead; and upon the brooding earth, spangled with home-lights over hill and vale, the stars gazed calmly down.
The steady, powerful droning of the power-plant rose, blent with the soothing murmur of the rapids and the river.
“Seems like a lullaby--doesn't it, dearest?” murmured Allan. “You know--it won't be long now before it's good-by and--good night.”
“I know,” she answered. “We've lived, haven't we? Oh, Allan, no one ever lived, ever in all this world--lived as much as you and I have lived! Think of it all from the beginning till now. No one ever so much, so richly, so happily, so well!”
“No one, darling!”
“But, after toil, rest--rest is sweet, too. I shall be ready for it when it summons me. I shall go to it, content and brave and smiling. Only--”
“Yes?”