A uniformed imp on a bicycle—a postal messenger—careened wildly up the drive with a special delivery letter. They saw him deliver it to old Nelson at the side portico and pedal whistling down a by-path.
"Then," he said quickly, "you know now that it never can again? It has been a year, a round year to-day. I made up my mind that I would not come to you till the last day was out."
"I felt that, too," she said. "I knew what you were thinking. I—I even guessed the year. Was it—so hard?"
"Yes," he answered. "But it would have been harder if I hadn't found it out when I did. The sting of all these months," he went on, "has been your thought of me! Every day, every hour, I have seen you as you looked that night at the 'Farm.' I shall never deserve that look again—Echo!"
She turned toward him at that, as if with a sudden impulse, her eyes like sapphire stars, her lips parted, but she did not speak. The failing sunlight spattered down through the moving foliage in green-gilt flashes that tinged her face and touched her hair with the soft burnish of Venetian gold, like that of a figure he remembered in St. Mark's. Behind her reared the seamed and grey old column—a faded background of age for a figure of immortal youth—and he knew suddenly that the picture of her, as he saw her at that moment, had covered forever the painful memory. There was only the ardent, unconditional now: only Echo and the dear old porch and the dimming daylight—and a bluebird singing from the heart of a tree—ever henceforward to be symbols to him of woman's love and—home!
He leaned toward her, his hand groping for hers, outstretched on the cool stone beside her, and said in a voice shaken, in spite of himself:
"Echo—it is just as it was a year ago, isn't it?"
She caught her hand—the one he groped for—to her cheek. She rose, and for an instant it seemed as if she had not heard. Then her glance wavered and fell and a bright, rich colour stained her cheeks like a sudden flush of rosy sun-set. But she had slightly turned away and he did not see it.
"Ah!" he said, looking up at her. "I may say it now—may I not?—what you must have known all along. I love you, I love you! Only you and your love, dear—that is all I ask of God!... Echo—"
There was a sudden sound behind them, a hoarse cry from the room they had left. Both turned sharply toward the French-window. Then she was down the long porch like a flying shadow.