“Say that you love me, Hetty,” pleaded the doctor.
“When you let me go, perhaps I will,” whispered Hetty.
Instantly the arms fell; and the doctor stood opposite her in the door-way, his head bent forward and his eyes fixed on her face.
Hetty cast her eyes down. Words did not come. It would have been easier to have said them while she was held close to Doctor Eben's side. Suddenly, before he had a suspicion of what she was about to do, she had darted away, was lost in the darkness, and in a second more he heard her door shut at the farther end of the hall.
Dr. Eben laughed a low and pleasant laugh. “She might as well have said it,” he thought: “she will say it to-morrow. I have won!” and he sank into the great white dimity-covered chair, at the head of Raby's bed, and looked into the fire. The very coals seemed to marshal themselves into shapes befitting his triumph: castles rose and fell; faces grew, smiled, and faded away smiling; roses and lilies and palms glowed ruby red, turned to silver, and paled into spiritual gray. The silence of the night seemed resonant with a very symphony of joy. Still Sally and Raby slept on. The boy's sweet face took each hour a more healthful tint; and, as Doctor Eben watched the blessed change, he said to himself:
“What a night! what a night! Two lives saved! Raby's and mine.” As the morning drew near, he threw up the shades of the eastern window, and watched for the dawn. “I will see this day's sun rise,” he said with a thrill of devout emotion; and he watched the horizon while it changed like a great flower calyx from gray to pearly yellow, from yellow to pale green, and at last, when it could hold back the day no longer, to a vast rose red with a golden sun in its centre.
IX.
That morning's light could have fallen on no happier house, the world over, than “Gunn's.” A little child brought back to life, out of the gates of death; two hearts entering anew on life, through the gates of love; half a score of hearts, each glad in the gladness of each other, and in the gladness of all,—what a morning it was!
Doctor Eben and Hetty met at the head of the stairs.