“THE LONG WHITE LILY—PUTTING IT DELICATELY TO HER CHEEK.”
There was a smothered exclamation; a rustle on the other side of the wall. The next moment a figure that had been lying under the wall rose up and confronted Grandmother; the figure of a young man, tall and graceful, with the look of a foreigner.
“Pitia!” cried the young man. “It is you? You call me?—see, I come! I am here, Manuel Santos.”
Yes, things happen so, sometimes, more strangely than in stories.
He stretched out his arms across the wall in greeting.
“Are you alive, Manuel?” asked Grandmother, making the sign of the cross, as her Spanish nurse had taught her. “Are you alive, or a spirit? Either way I am glad, oh, glad to see you, Manuel!”
She drew near timidly, and timidly reached out her hand and touched his; he grasped it with a cry, and then with one motion had leaped the wall and caught her in his arms. “Pitia!” he cried. “To me! mine, forever!”
He lifted her face to his, but in breathless haste little Grandmother put him from her and leaned back against the wall, with hands outstretched keeping him off.
“Manuel,” she said. “I have a great deal to tell you. I thought—you did not come back. I thought you were dead.”