And still Christie Bayle gazes on, half expecting to see the tall, dark, handsome man who cast so deep a shadow across so many lives; but instead of that the graceful figure that is so like Millicent Hallam of the past, appears framed in the window to stand there gazing out into the dark garden.
Then she turns back sharply, to answer some remark made in the little drawing-room, and looks quickly out again with hands resting on the door.
It is very dark out there, and her eyes are accustomed to the light of the drawing-room; but in a minute or so she sees that which she sought, and half runs over the dewy lawn to where she is clasped in two strong arms.
“You truant!” she says playfully, as she nestles close to him. “Come in and sing; we want you to make the place complete. Why, what are you thinking about?”
“I was thinking of the past, Julie,” he says.
She looks up at him in the starlight; and he gazes down in her glistening eyes.
“The past? Let me think of it too. Are we not one?”
And as they stand together the little English interior before them seems to fade away, and the light they gaze upon to be the glowing sunshine of the far South, blazing down in all its glory upon the grassy grave and glistening stone that mark the resting-place of This Man’s Wife.
The End.