A minute later she held back his face with her two hands. Her eyes were filled with the glory of the stars and her lips were red with the wild, sweet passion of their kisses. Slowly a shadow came, and with it an unutterable tenderness in the words which she whispered to him:
"Peter, I knew. Carter sent me word—about your father—and you——"
She drew his head down until she was holding it against her breast. Her heart beat against his cheek. Her lips kissed his hair.
"Only you—you and God—know how sorry I am," she whispered.
And Peter felt once more like the small boy in the edge of the forest years ago, when Mona had come to him in the dusk of evening to mend his broken heart. For in these first moments of his homecoming it was Mona—again—who thought first of his grief, and not of her own happiness; and holding his head close, pressing his rough cheek in the palm of her soft hand, she told him how Carter had sent word to her all the way down through the wilderness, and how she had kept Carter's message to herself—as he had asked her to do—and had waited night and day for his coming with prayers of gratitude in her heart, and sorrow for him.
"And Carter promised to bring you to me," she whispered, "because he said that in the end he had learned to love your father—and you."
[CHAPTER XXIV]
Where the shadow of Pierre Gourdon's cabin fell deepest a man had dragged himself and lay like a dark and lifeless blot. Since Peter had tapped at the window this man had scarcely moved, except to breathe and change his position a little as he watched the lovers out in the light of the moon and stars. They were very near to him, so near he might have touched them with a pole less than the length of that which Peter had used. And he heard the girl speak of Carter, and of what Carter had done.