“He is gone,” he continued, a resigned softness creeping into the monotony of his voice, “and it was in this letter that he asked me to go away, for it was sin to remain. Of this I took counsel of God, and for two nights I prayed to our Christ on His crucifix, and to-day at dawn, God bade me go.”
“Did you know,” he asked with singular simplicity, “that I have come back to you?”
The wife moved slightly, and the light in her great eyes deepened.
“You have no husband, for husbands are searched out by God, as wives are sent by Him from heaven. On the second night before my crucifix all things became clear to me, and doubts were brushed aside. We will go to another country; to America, where all are free; to Australia, where all are forgotten, or to other lands where men are lost. We will be always together; I can look at you and you can put your hand upon my shoulder, and it will be as in heaven. We will live together forever, for whom God marries He never parts. I have planned how we shall leave the city,” he continued, his voice vibrant with eagerness. “You know no one can leave this city by night, but on the eve of the Propitiation of the Gods of the Waters all of the city gates and ward gates will be open. You can leave the park by the western postern and I will meet you there the second hour after darkness. We will not go to Hongkong, for they would send ships and bring us back. We cannot remain in Yingching, for they would find us. We cannot go to another town in the Empire, for all of the magistrates in the Middle Kingdom will search for you. I have thought carefully of all this and have planned that when you come to the postern, I will meet you with a sedan; I will take you to the river, where I will have a river boat waiting, then we will go up the river to the Grotto of the Sleepless Dragon. Men fear this Cavern of Yu Ngao, but there is no danger. I will go there first with Tsang and prepare it for you, and when you go we will take Tsang’s wife. We can stay there until people forget, then we will take a boat and go down the river by night until we come to the sea. At Pakhoi we will take a sea junk and go to Singapore, for there all the ships of the world meet.
“Will you go?”
The wife did not reply, so they remained motionless in silence, and time passed as it had passed with them before.
The sun slid slowly down the cloudless September heavens; the shadow of the feathery bamboo crept again into the chamber and gently slunk away; but when the rose-saffron of the afterglow flushed upward the western sky and diffused its soft light through the court, the wife left her stool and crossed over to the shell-latticed window, and as when the summer storm is past and the burdened lily tilts its gathered diamonds to the sun, so her tears, trembling on her cheeks, sparkled joyously in the amber light.
When the melancholy “coo-ee, coo-ee” of the argus-eyed pheasant sounded softly through the twilight, she came back from the window, her little hands clasped together, her eyes downcast. For several moments she stood shyly beside him, then looking up, said:
“I will go.”
For some time the Breton stood as if he had not heard, then kneeling, leaned forward until his head touched her robe. The wife lay her hand lightly upon his head, and for the first time there fell upon him that blessing, which, like mercy, has a double sanctity, and though its voice is unheard among the fretful noises of the world, yet its reverberations passing from a woman’s heart go on and on through vast distances and depths until its echoes cease in that uncertain chasm—a man’s breast.