"Do you remember the will, Jessica?" he asked her presently. "The will I drew the day he came back? You never knew, but I signed it—the night of your wedding. Harry Sanderson was right, my dear, wasn't he?
"I wish now I hadn't signed it, Jessica," he added. "I must set it right—I must set it right!" He watched her with a smile on his face. "I will rest now," he said, and she adjusted the pillows and turned the lamp low.
Crossing the room, she stepped through the long window on to the porch, and stood leaning on the railing. From the dark hedges where the brown birds built came a drowsy twitter as from a nest of dreams. A long time she stood there, a thousand thoughts busy in her brain—of Hugh, of the beckoning future. She thought of the day she had destroyed the model that her fingers longed to remold, now that the Prodigal was indeed returned. The words of the biblical narrative flashed through her mind: And he arose and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him. So Hugh's father would meet him now! The dewed odors of the jasmin brought the memory of that stormy night when he had come to her in his sleep. She imagined she heard again his last word—his whispered "Good-by" in the sound of the rain.
She thought it a memory, but the word that flashed into her mind was carried to her from the shadow, where a man stood in the shrubbery watching her dim figure and her face white and beautiful in the light from a near-by window, with a passionate longing and rebellion.
Harry was seeing her, he told himself, for the last time. He had made up his mind to this on that stormy morning when he had found the lucky crevice. For days he had labored, spurred by a fierce haste to make requital. Till the last ounce of the rich "pocket" had been washed, and the whole taken to the bank in the town, no one had known of the find. It had repaid the forgery and left him a handful of dollars over—enough to take him far away from the only thing that made life worth the effort. He had climbed to the ridge on the bare chance of seeing Jessica—not of speaking to her. Watching her, it required all his repression not to yield to the reckless desire that prompted him to go to her, look into her eyes, and tell her he loved her. He made a step forward, but stopped short, as she turned and vanished through the window.
Standing on the porch, a gradual feeling of apprehension had come to Jessica—an impression of blankness and chill that affected her strangely. Inside the room she stood still, frightened at the sudden sense of utter soundlessness.
She caught up the lamp, and, turning the wick, approached the bed. She put out her hand and touched the wasted one on the coverlet. Then a sobbing cry came from her lips.
David Stires was gone. A crowning joy had goldened his bitterness at the last moment, and he had gone away with his son's face in his heart and the smile of welcome on his lips.