With this law he had made his story a story of the world.
The star on the Tree bore it back to Chaldæa; the candle bore it to ancient Persia; the cross bore it to the Nile and Isis and Osiris; the dove bore it to Syria; the bell bore it to Confucius; the drum bore it to Buddha; the drinking horn to Greece; the tinsel to Romulus and Rome; the doll to Abraham and Isaac; the masks to Gaul; the mistletoe to Britain,—and all brought it to Christ,—Christ the latest world-ideal of sacrifice that is self-sacrifice and of the giving of all for all.
The story was for herself, he had said, and for himself.
Himself! Here at last all her pain and wandering of this night ended: at the bottom of her wound where rankled his problem.
From this problem she had most shrunk and into this she now entered: She sacrificed herself in him! She laid upon herself his temptation and his struggle.
Taking her candle, she passed back into her bedroom and screened it where she had screened it before; then went into his bedroom.
She put her wedding ring on again with blanched lips. She went to his bedside, and drawing to the pillow the chair on which his clothes were piled, sat down and laid her face over on it; and there in that shrine of feeling where speech is formed, but whence it never issues, she made her last communion with him:
“You, to whom I gave my youth and all that youth could mean to me; whose children I have borne and nurtured at my breast—all of whose eyes I have seen open and the eyes of some of whom I have closed; husband of my girlhood, loved as no woman ever loved the man who took her home; strength and laughter of his house; helper of what is best in me; my defender against things in myself that I cannot govern; pathfinder of my future; rock of the ebbing years! Though my hair turn white as driven snow and flesh wither to the bone, I shall never cease to be the flame that you yourself have kindled.
“But never again to you! Let the stillness of nature fall where there must be stillness! Peace come with its peace! And the room which heard our whisperings of the night, let it be the Room of the Silences—the Long Silences! Adieu, cross of living fire that I have so clung to!—Adieu!—Adieu!—Adieu!—Adieu!”