The Long Lane's Turning

by Hallie Erminie Rives

She put one hand to her throat. "I—don't care to understand—now. I—I'm only trying—to realise—" She paused. The doming tinder in the fire-place broke and fell, and for a last instant a yellow-ochre burst of flame threw a bright golden veil about them. Two great tears rolled down her cheeks. "Then you," she whispered, "then you know why I went there. You could not believe that I—that I—"

"My darling!" His arms were around her now, crushing her to him with tender fierceness, till she could feel his heart thudding against her breast, and the blossom crushed there held for him the scent of all the roses of all the world. He bent his head and their lips clung into a kiss. "Never—never—that!" he murmured, with his lips against her cheek, "though I must be forgiven very much. I was blind. I thought you knew—knew that it was really I there in the prison, knew and were willing that it should be! And all the while..."

"And I," she whispered, "I thought you had gone away, and didn't care—any more. And all along—all along..."

When they drew a little apart so that each might better see the other's face, the wonder and miracle had touched them both with a kind of awe. She looked at him with lips that were still trembling under the startled glory in her eyes. "The day after that—that night—I went to your office, saw my broken picture—and—the bottle. I guessed—I guessed—"

"It was true," he said. "I threw away my promise to you. I would have thrown myself away with it! But it was not to be, sweetheart! I have come back to you, dearest—dearest of all the world!"

So they stood, haloed in the lamp-light, clinging together, swayed and shaken, love and youth and dream melted into one golden eternity, pouring forth tender, sweet confessions in broken words and silences, oblivious to the passage of time, to the clamour that had begun to rise from the rooms across the hall—to a sound that came over the tree-tops of the avenue, blazing now with fireworks, the sound of jubilance and marching feet, drawing nearer and nearer.

At midnight the great porch of Midfields was hung gay with lanterns and bunting and Harry stood watching the rear-guard of torch-bearers stream down the drive. The battalions had gathered like magic when the blowing of whistles announced that the returns from the crucial counties spelled victory beyond peradventure. They had swung down the main street, a band at their head, a shouting, jostling army, to acclaim the Governor-Elect.

With his friends of the long fight—Judge Allen, Brent and a score of others—about him, he had spoken to them, a short speech full of feeling. They, not he, had won the fight, he told them. And the victory was an earnest of the future. But the race was not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong; the forces they had that day vanquished would return to the struggle, and they must be beaten again and again till the State, and every home within its borders, was free forever. Now the cheering was over and the throngs had trooped away after the band, to parade the denser streets of the business section, while the Committee lingered for an exultant aftermath in the dismantled east room.

As Governor Eveland stood with the Judge on the porch, looking out over the trampled lawn, Treadwell came up the drive.

"I thought," he said, "that you would like to know about Craig. He is as he was before they took him abroad for the operation. It is unlikely that there will ever be any change again, they think."