Every winter Andrew and his wife go to town for a while, and visitors come to the farm-house who fairly electrify the village with their "cranks."
The best known of these is a little black-a-vised man with big diamonds, a profane tongue and a guilty but "thankful 'eart." He cherishes, so he says, a hopeless passion for Miss Myers, and indeed Miss Myers likes the new régime very well, for she was never ousted from the house-keeping department, and if it was a glory and a credit to manage well for Andrew and herself, how much greater it is to cast honour over a board where such fine people as Judith's friends sit daily.
Andrew is secretly very proud that all these fine folk should come and see how happy Judith is. Only once did he have any difference with any of them. That was when Judith first regained her strength and her old manager came to see her. He had a brand-new scheme for Judith's benefit in his brain. She was to sing in grand concerts, and he had all her tour mapped out. He was good enough to say Andrew could come along. Andrew held brief and bitter speech with him, and then went to Judith. He could see how strong the old glamour yet was. He took her in his arms, and after a long, tender discussion she gave him the promise he was pleading for, never more to sing in public, a decision which made Andrew her slave forever, although it wrung his heart to see what this renunciation cost her. He felt it was right. Poor, high-strung Judith needed a steady hand upon the rein of her eager spirit, else it would have soon carried her beyond her strength. And so, ringing about an old farm-house, or through the chestnut woods, or below the lindens on the hill-side, there often sounds a voice once echoed by the bravos of the world. Perhaps the aspiration it awakens in one strong soul is better applause.
So Andrew and Judith live on, they two and Miss Myers, as nearly happy as mortals may be. Heaven would be entirely illogical if such as they two had no heartaches.
Sometimes Judith steals away from Miss Myers and Andrew and thinks of the old days, the first efforts, the hopes, the fears, the strife and the success—the glorious success that might have been many times repeated: that might, as base metals might be transmuted into gold, have become fame. A nasty heartache gnaws in her breast, her face pales, her eyes grow wide and eager. At such times Andrew knows well the struggle that rends her tender heart, and he soon searches her out: and upon his breast, beneath the spell of his worship her restless spirit quiets itself to peace. What might be a tragedy of distrust is made a bond of stronger union by perfect confidence. But Judith's face will always bear the traces of these times.
When a coal is carried from the Divine Fire and laid upon mortal lips, it must be blown into a flame to illumine the world, or it sears the lips it touches. The gods will not have their gifts disregarded. They care little that the mortal breath may be too weak to sustain the flame, though it perish in the effort. Indeed, the gods forgive that, and sometimes spare a little of their glory to gild a grave. But let the breath they demand be stolen for our own sighs or sobs, or stifled by dear-bought kisses, and they give swift recompense of pain. Judith had borne that smart.
Andrew, too, has unfulfilled dreams, as Judith knows when she sees his eyes grow wistful as they rest upon the faces of children. And Judith goes to him then, and lays her head upon his arm with an apology so poignant, a love so perfect in her grey eyes, that he forgets everything in the marvel that this woman is his. And thus with each of them, the little shadows only serve to enhance the sunshine. Their life is a glorious reality; their love a poem. Together they know no pain from the past, no regret for the present, no fear for the future. They sometimes even dare to dream that their love will bestow upon them its own immortality—that through eternity they will be as they are now, together and happy.