Neither did Crothers, now, for the stranger was hidden from sight. Then he began to wonder if there really had been any one. The night's revel had been rather wilder than usual, and Crothers was not as young as he once was.
The bell of his factory was ringing, however, and he unsteadily made his way thither.
It was Cynthia who was treading lightly up The Way, but not the Cynthia who a few months before had gone so blindly to do the bidding of that inner voice of conscience.
"It was here," murmured she, standing behind a tall tree by the road, "that you fled from Crothers the night of the fire. Poor little Cyn!"
That was it! The child, Cynthia, walked beside the woman, Cynthia, now, and the woman with clear, awakened eyes—understood at last!
"Poor little Cyn! How frightened you were and how bravely you fought for—me! Or was it I who fought for you? Never mind! we have come home. Come home together, dear, you and I! How heavenly good it is for us to come—together!"
At every step the weariness and sense of peril, engendered by her experience, dropped from Cynthia. She was a woman, but Lans had left her soul to her, and she could clasp hands with the past quite confidently and joyously.
"Home! home!" The word thrilled and thrilled through her being, and on every hand she noted the touch of Sandy Morley with tender appreciation. She laughed, too, this thin, pale girl, and could Sandy have seen her then he would have thought her shining white face, set in the dark furs, more like, than ever, the dogwood bloom under the pines!
"And here I met him on The Way!" Cynthia paused at the spot where she had stood that spring morning, and saw, with a shock of disappointment, the man who had usurped her childish ideal of Sandy Morley.
"How lonely he must have been—when I did not know him! Oh! Sandy—to think I did not know you. You, with your brave, kind eyes and your tender heart!"