"Yes," she murmured, "I know."
"It came to me in the night, last night. Up to then it had seemed fate's whipper-in that was driving me. But then, when I saw the gulf opening at my feet, and saw no way out, and ceased to struggle, I knew all at once that fate is only an empty name; that it was—God."
He felt her fingers quiver in his clasp.
"There was an Eye that watched and a Hand that overruled," he said slowly. "Even the evil and the hatred—the temptation, the sin and the pain—the penalty—It overruled them all. Drink made the man who shot Craig a criminal—yet but for that burglary you might now be Craig's wife! Drink sent me to Craig's house that night—yet but for that journey I could not have saved you. Drink closed the prison door on me, but only there—I know it now!—could I have mastered it! And if I have won in this campaign and if I sit—with you, my darling!—in the Mansion on the Hill, it is because of what I learned within those walls—the knowledge of what drink has done to men!"
He released her hands and looked up into the heavens.
"It shall vanish from this state," he said. "And it shall vanish from this Union! I am as sure of it as if the sign of its passing were written there in the sky!"
She caught his arm. "See!" she said.
Far away, city-ward, over the trees, against the deep, dark vault, the dazzling, many-pointed blaze of a rocket paled and sank into the darkness.