“What—what do you think about it, Mary?”
Mary, looking into his eyes with the face of one who pleads for mercy, whispered, “He’s right,” then buried her face in his bosom and wept like a babe.
“I felt it six months ago,” she said later, sitting on her husband’s knee and holding his folded hands tightly in hers.
“Why didn’t you say so?” asked John.
“I was too selfish,” was her reply.
When, on the second day afterward, they entered the Doctor’s office Richling was bright with that new hope which always rises up beside a new experiment, and Mary looked well and happy. The Doctor wrote them a letter of introduction to the steam-boat agent.
“You’re taking a very sensible course,” he said, smoothing the blotting-paper heavily over the letter. “Of course, you think it’s hard. It is hard. But distance needn’t separate you.”
“It can’t,” said Richling.
“Time,” continued the Doctor,—“maybe a few months,—will bring you together again, prepared for a long life of secure union; and then, when you look back upon this, you’ll be proud of your courage and good sense. And you’ll be”— He enclosed the note, directed the envelope, and, pausing with it still in his hand, turned toward the pair. They rose up. His rare, sick-room smile hovered about his mouth, and he said:—
“You’ll be all the happier—all three of you.”