She awoke to the sun, glad-hearted and made newly buoyant by one of those soundless black sleeping-nights that come only to the town-tired when they have first fled. She ran to the glass to know if the restoration she felt might also be seen. With unbiassed calculation the black-fringed lids drew apart and one hand pushed back of the temple, and held there, a tangled skein of hair that had thrown the dusk of a deep wood about her eyes. Then, as she looked, came the little dreaming smile that unfitted critic eyes for their office; a smile that wakened to a laugh as she looked—a little womanish chuckle of confident joy, as one alone speaking aloud in an overflowing moment.
An hour later she was greeting Bernal where the sun washed through the big room.
"Young life sings in me!" she said, and felt his lightening eyes upon her lips as she smiled.
There were three days of it—days in which, however, she grew to fear those eyes, lest they fall upon her in judgment. She now saw that his eyes had changed most. They gave the face its look of absence, of dreaming awkwardness. They had the depth of a hazy sky at times, then cleared to a coldly lucid glance that would see nothing ever to fear, within or without; that would hide no falseness nor yet be deceived by any—a deadly half-shut, appraising coolness that would know false from true, even though they mated amicably and distractingly in one mind.
The effect of this glance which she found upon herself from time to time was to make Nancy suspect herself— to question her motives and try her defenses. To her amazement she found these latter weak under Bernal's gaze, and there grew in her a tender remorse for the injustice she had done her husband. From little pricking suspicions on the first day she came on the last to conviction. It seemed that being with Bernal had opened her eyes to Allan's worth. She had narrowly, flippantly misjudged a good man—good in all essentials. She was contrite for her unwifely lack of abnegation. She began to see herself and Allan with Bernal's eyes: she was less than she had thought—he was more. Bernal had proved these things to her all unconsciously. Now her heart was flooded with gratitude for his simple, ready, heartfelt praise of his brother—of his unfailing good-temper, his loyalty, his gifts, his modesty so often distressed by outspoken admiration of his personal graces. She listened and applauded with a heart that renewed itself in all good resolves of devotion. Even when Bernal talked of himself, he made her feel that she had been unjust to Allan.
Little by little she drew many things from him—the story of his journeyings and of his still more intricate mental wanderings. And it thrilled her to think he had come back with a message—even though he already doubted himself. Sometimes he would be jocular about it and again hot with a passion to express himself.
"Nance," he said on another night, "when you have a real faith in God a dead man is a miracle not less than a living—and a live man dying is quite as wondrous as a dead man living. Do you know, I was staggered one day by discovering that the earth didn't give way when I stepped on it? The primitive man knowing little of physics doesn't know that a child's hand could move the earth through space—but for a certain mysterious resistance. That's God. I felt him all that day, at every step, pushing the little globe back under me— counteracting me—resisting me—ever so gently. Those are times when you feel you must tell it, Nance—when the God-consciousness comes."
"Oh, Bernal, if you could—if you could come back to do what your grandfather really wanted you to do— to preach something worth while!"
"I doubt the need for my message, Nance. I need for myself a God that could no more spare a Hottentot than a Pope—but I doubt if the world does. No one would listen to me—I'm only a dreamer. Once when I was small they gave me a candy cane for Christmas. It was a thing I had long worshipped in shop-windows —actually worshipped as the primitive man worshipped his idol. I can remember how sad I was when no one else worshipped with me, or paid the least attention to my treasure. I suspect I shall meet the same indifference now. And I hope I'll have the same philosophy. I remember I brought myself to eat the cane, which I suppose is the primary intention regarding them—and perhaps the fruits of one's faith should be eaten quite as practically."
They had sent no word to Allan, agreeing it were better fun to surprise him. When they took the train together on the third day, the wife not less than the brother looked forward to a joyous reunion with him. And now that Nancy had proved in her heart the perverse unwifeliness of her old attitude and was eager to begin the symbolic rites of her atonement, it came to her to wonder how Bernal would have judged her had she persisted in that first wild impulse of rebellion. She wanted to see from what degree of his reprobation she had saved herself. She would be circuitous in her approach.