"Well, it is a wonder. Come on, Mr. Morgan."
The old man watched them as they picked their way through the hedge and concluded his interrupted remark: "If you break that loyal heart—if you bring a tear to those brown eyes, you will meet a different man from Royson." But he drove the thought away while he looked affectionately after the pair.
Down came the little stream, with an emphasis and noise disproportioned to its size, the cause being, as Edward guessed, the distance of the fall and the fact that the rock on which it struck was not a solid foundation, but rested above a cavity. Mary waited while he listened, turning away to pluck a flower and to catch in the falling mist the colors of the rainbow. But as Edward stood, over him came a flood of thoughts; for the air was full of a weird melody, the overtone of one great chord that thrilled him to the heart. As in a dream he saw her standing there, the blue skies and towering trees above her, a bit of light in a desert of solitude. Near, but separated from him by an infinite gulf. "Forever! Forever!" all else was blotted out.
She saw on his face the white desperation she had noticed once before.
"You have found it," she said. "What is the tone?"
"Despair," he answered, sadly. "It can mean nothing else."
"And yet," she said, a new thought animating her mobile face, as she pointed into the mist above, "over it hangs the rainbow."