Together in the doorway of the refuge at Port Colborne, Catherine stood with Gabriel, watching the beacon of liberty upon the heavens. The light, a halo round her eager face, showed his powerful figure and the smile of triumph in his eyes. His left arm, broken by the fall in the aeroplane, now rested in a sling. His right, protecting in its strength, was round the girl. And as her head found shelter and rest, at length, upon his shoulder, she, too, smiled; and her eyes seemed to see visions in the glory of the sky.
"Visions!" said she, softly, as though voicing a universal thought. "Do you behold them, too?"
He nodded.
"Yes," he answered, "and they are beautiful and sweet and pure!"
"Visions that we now shall surely see?"
"Shall surely see!" he echoed; and a little silence fell. Far off, they seemed to hear a vast and thousand-throated cheering, that the night-wind brought to them in long and heart-inspiring cadences.
"Gabriel," she said, at last.
"Well?"
"I wish he might have seen them, and have understood! In spite of all he did, and was, he was my father!"
"Yes," answered Gabriel, sensing her grief. "But would you have had him live through this? Live, with the whole world out of his grasp, again? Live, with all his plans wrecked and broken? Live on in this new time, where he could have comprehended nothing? Live on, in misery and rage and impotence?