Ah! how comforting it was to lie under the magic of this voice, in which a note of homeliness quivered.
"So he hasn't gone, after all," she thought, and leaned back contentedly on her cushion, which had been placed on the carpet as a support for her neck. If she had known his Christian name, she would have called him by it now. But she was still ignorant of it, even after all that had passed between them. What a shame it was! She could only put out her arms a little towards him in silence. He was already kneeling beside her, stroking her hands.
She must keep quiet, absolutely quiet.
"Will everything be all right now?" she asked, smiling up at him in bliss.
Yes, yes; everything. Ways and means must be found of seeing each other often as friends, as brother and sister. No; there should be no parting, no separation. No one was bound to inflict such hideous torture on himself as that.
She thought with a shudder of the moment when darkness had gathered in around her, and she had sunk into the mire. So would her life always have been without him. But now, as brother and sister, they were free to greet in light-hearted joyousness a new dawn.
Such happiness was almost inconceivable.
She groped for his arm, and pillowed her cheek in the palm of his hand with a deep-drawn happy sigh. But Adele, who had all this time been discreetly looking out of the window, now interposed with the suggestion that a fresh compress was needed, as the wound in her mistress's forehead was still bleeding. And so it was adjusted.
CHAPTER XIV
In human development each spring, as it comes round, has its particular significance and associations. Every spring finds a man different; every one opens old wounds anew, and sounds hidden depths. Sometimes it passes like a stupid unprofitable game, because he himself is feeling stupid and unprofitable; others torment him with a thousand futile admonitions, because he is utterly unable to render account to his own conscience. Sometimes spring finds him barren and clogged, like ground that cannot recover from the ravages of winter. And, again, spring carols deceptive songs of liberation and redemption in a man's heart, as if it was in its power to liberate and redeem. But the most beautiful manifestation of spring is when we are scarcely aware of it, because its budding and sprouting is but symbolic of the jubilant stirring of spring within us, the widening and growth of our being spiritually.