"That's right!" he whispered. "I only wanted you to say my name. Good-bye now! Don't fret for me! After all, everything is as it should be."
She stood before him, the conqueror. All preconceptions had been scattered; she had not even won her laurels, they had been placed at her feet; and all the pomp and circumstance she could summon to her triumphing was a white face, a drooping head, and speechless lips.
"Good-bye, Maxine!" The words cried for response, and by a supreme effort she summoned her voice from some far region.
"Good-bye!"
He did not kiss her hand again, but bending his head, he solemnly kissed his own ring, lying cold upon her finger.
CHAPTER XLI
ALL was finished. Mystery was at an end. The pilgrim's staff had been placed in Maxine's hand, her feet set toward the great white road. She leaned back against the window of the salon and her mental eyes scanned that road—the coveted road of freedom, the way of splendid isolation—and in a vague, dumb fashion she wondered why the whiteness that had gleamed like snow in the distance should take on the hue of dust seen at close quarters. She wondered why she should feel so absolutely numbed—why life, with its exuberances of joy and sorrow, should suddenly have receded from her as a tide recedes.
There had been no battle; hers was a bloodless victory. Fate had been exquisitely kind, as is Fate's way when she would be ironical. Maxine could call up no cause for grief or for resentment, no cause even for remorse. She had confessed herself; she had been shriven and blessed, and bade to go her way!