"That was the first time things we should have known—were known by my friend and me!" Margaret's voice was low and hard.
"She—she cursed him, her husband—and left him! It was terrible! I was frightened, more frightened than I had ever been. Everything seemed tottering around me. I thought—I must die; I dared trust nothing. Just then—some one told me—he loved me; and I—I had loved him. But I was more afraid of him than of any one in God's world. I thought I was going mad, and then—I went to Doctor Ledyard and told him all about it. I just threw my whole burden of doubt and ignorance upon him—he is such a good man! Sometimes I weep when I think of him. He was father, friend, and physician, all in one. He understood. He told me to go away; he got you for me. He told me to play like a little girl, with only the real and beautiful things of life; to forget the worries, and he would make sure!
"Priscilla, he has made sure! My love is safe. I can give myself to my love and let it have its way with me, and in the beautiful future, our future, his and mine, little children cannot—curse us by their suffering and deformity.
"This must be the heritage a woman should be able to give her children, or she has no right to her own love. God has been so good to me—he has not asked for sacrifice; but"—here she spoke fiercely—"I was ready to sacrifice my love—for I had seen my friend's baby!
"I had never known God before as I know him now. He came to me with love and faith and my glorious life. Before, my God was a prayer-book God; a dead thing that only rustled when we touched him; and now, oh! Cilla, he is alive and breathing in good men and women, in little children, in all the beautiful, real things. They did not bury my God, or yours, long ago; they only set him free for us to find and love and follow."
They clung to each other in a passion of reverence and happiness, and then kissed each other good night.
CHAPTER XXII
"My girl," said Travers a week later, "how shall it be? May I tell every one how madly happy I am? May I take you to that little shrine a mile up the mountain yonder and make you—mine—and then show them all why I am so happy? Or——"
"Yes. Or——" Priscilla lay quite contentedly in his arms, her eyes on the shining outlines of The Ghost.