“Pity!” he exclaimed, taking her hand, fervidly. “Ah, no! It is greater than that! I love you, Hera. From the first it has been so—from the very first. Knowing all and realising all, I have loved you with the whole power of my being. I will not silence the cry of this love, and you, too, must listen.”
An alarming yet rapturous shudder went through her frame, and she shrank from him. With hands at his temples, he stood like one dizzy from a blow.
“Are you sorry?” he asked, and she made him no answer. “Oh, not that!” he pleaded. “Not that!”
She saw her life of despair whirling away, and a new life dawning, beautiful, glorious.
“Sorry?” she said at last, her breath going with the words. “No; I am glad.” And he drew her to him, bent his head above hers, and kissed her lips.
The shower had ceased and the sky was clearing. From rifts in the speeding clouds streams of sunshine found their way to earth. A golden shaft came in by the open clerestory and lingered upon them. Two bluebirds talked blithely on a window ledge. The rook and his mate came down from their dark corner to fly out into the sparkling air.
Beholding the sunshine, Mario said: “See, the glory of heaven falls upon this unison.”
They laughed together like careless children, forgetting all but their new-found joy, and feared no more.
“I was lost; I have found my way,” she murmured.
“And the mariner sailing under sealed orders has learned his destiny,” he said. “I dreaded the hour that was to take you from me, dear, and reason lost hope; but not so the heart. And now you are my own, my own for ever.”