"And you knew I loved you, though in those days I dare not tell you so? I have done so, I think, from the night I first saw you, and yet there is so much to make you shrink from me."
"No," said Barbara, very softly, "there is nothing whatever now—and if perfection had been indispensable you would never have thought of me."
Brooke laid his other hand on her shoulder, and, standing so, while every nerve in him thrilled, still held her a little apart, so that the silvery light shone into her flushed face. For a moment she met his gaze, and her eyes were shining.
"Do you know that, absurd as it may sound, I seemed to know that night at Quatomac that I should hold you in my arms again one day?" he said. "Of course, the thing seemed out of the question, an insensate dream, and still I could never quite let go my hold of the alluring fancy."
"And if the dream had never been fulfilled?"
Brooke laughed curiously. "You would still have ridden beside me through many a long night march, with the moon shining round and full behind your shoulder, and I should have felt the white dress brush me softly where the trail was dark."
"Then I should have been always young to you. You would never have seen me grow faded and the grey creep into my hair."
Brooke drew her towards him, and held her close. "My dear, you will be always beautiful to me. We will grow old together, and the one who must cross the last dark river first will, at least, start out on the shadowy trail holding the other's hand."
It was an hour later when Barbara, with the man's arm still about her, glanced across the velvet lawn to the old grey house beneath the dusky slope of wooded hill. The moonlight silvered its weathered front, and the deep tranquillity of the sheltered valley made itself felt.
"Yes," said Brooke, "it is yours and mine."