CHAPTER XXI.
OUT OF THE SHADOW.
They had been together for an hour, the husband and the wife. The first excitement was now over, and Sylvia stood behind him tearless and tranquil, while Moor, looking like a man out of whom the sea had drenched both strength and spirit, leaned his weary head against her, trying to accept the great loss, enjoy the great gain which had befallen him. Hitherto all their talk had been of Warwick, and as Moor concluded the history of the months so tragically ended, for the first time he ventured to express wonder at the calmness with which his hearer received the sad story.
"How quietly you listen to words which it wrings my heart to utter. Have you wept your tears dry, or do you still cling to hope?"
"No, I feel that we shall never see him any more; but I have no desire to weep, for tears and lamentations do not belong to him. He died a beautiful, a noble death; the sea is a fitting grave for him, and it is pleasant to think of him asleep there, quiet at last."
"I cannot feel so; I find it hard to think of him as dead; he was so full of life, so fit to live."
"And therefore fit to die. Imagine him as I do, enjoying the larger life he longed for, and growing to be the strong, sweet soul whose foreshadowing we saw and loved so here."
"Sylvia, I have told you of the beautiful change which befell him in those last days, and now I see the same in you. Are you, too, about to leave me when I have just recovered you?"
"I shall stay with you all my life."
"Then Adam was less to you than you believed, and I am more?"