Presently he felt himself to be unbearably weary. Physical needs, ignored all day, began to clamour. He must get home at once. No outré proceedings must raise the easy breath of gossip. He must not flinch, he dared not run away, all must be done decently and in order. Let him only keep his head now—the bravest man need not look too far into the morrow.
It must be late, he knew. The road into Coombe was deserted. All the buggies of the country folk returning from evening service had passed long ago and even the happy young couples indulging in a Sunday night "after church" flirtation had decorously sought their homes. He looked at his watch by the clear starlight. It was later even than he had thought. No need to avoid passing the Elms, now; they would all be asleep—he might perhaps be able to sleep himself if he knew that no light burned in Esther's window.
There was no light in the house anywhere. It stood black in the shadow of its trees. The doctor found himself walking softly. His steps grew slower, paused. Irresistibly the "spirit in his feet" drew him to the closed gate from where he could see the black oblong of her window.
"She is asleep," he thought. "Of course she is asleep. Thank God!"
Then, on the instant of dropping his eyes from the window, he saw her.
She was standing quite near, in the shadow of the elm.
"Esther!" The one word leaped from his lips like a cry.
"Yes, it is I," she said.
She offered no word of explanation nor did any need of one occur to him. Moving from the shadow into the soft starlight she came toward him like the spirit of the night. But when she paused, so close that only the gate divided them, he saw that her eyes were wide and dark with trouble.
"I am so glad you came. I wanted to see you. I—I could not sleep." She spoke with the direct simplicity of a child, yet nothing could have shown more plainly that she was a child no longer. All her pretty girlish hesitation, all her happy shyness had passed away on the breath of the great awakening. It was a woman who stood there, pale, remote, with a woman's question in her eyes.
The keen shock of the change in her filled Callandar with rebellious joy; it would be pain presently, but, just for the moment, love exulted shamelessly, claiming her own. He tried to answer her but no words came.