“Samantha,” he said at last, and his voice sounded so strange to him that the word quivered timidly towards her.
She paused upon a stroke, and some new note in his voice sent so sudden a thrill to her heart that she caught her breath with a painful kind of joy. The hammer dropped upon the anvil, and, in a moment, she stood in the doorway of his room.
“Francis, Francis,” she responded in a low whisper. He started up from his couch of skins. “Samantha, my wife!” he cried, in a strong proud voice.
She dropped beside him and caught his head, like a mother, to her shoulder, and set her warm lips on his forehead and hair with a kind of hunger; and then he drew her face down and kissed her on the lips. Tears hung at her eyes, and presently dropped on her cheeks, a sob shook her, and then she was still, her hands grasping his shoulders.
“Have I been ill?” he asked.
“You have been very ill, Francis.”
“Has it been long?”
Her fingers passed tenderly through his grizzled hair. “Too long, too long, my husband,” she replied.
“Is it summer now?”
“Yes, Francis, it is summer.”