But Tom still looked bewildered. Just why should Lois have suddenly acquired her zeal for money? She had never been luxurious in her tastes, turning always preferably to simplicity of living, as those of the aristocracy of brains usually do. Therefore he awaited enlightenment. It was twilight and they were sitting together in the dusk, but he could see her eyes shining with a sort of wistful tenderness as they lifted themselves to his.
"You don't ask why I wanted the money? Is it because you know that I wanted it to give to you?" She pushed the publisher's letter across the table to him. "It is yours, dear,--my gift to the hospital. I haven't been able to show I cared for what you were working for. Perhaps I haven't really cared, though I think I have learned a little about it this winter, while I've been working myself. I've had a little light--a crack of it, anyway." She smiled at him in the grayness. "But I've always cared for you, Tom, even when maybe I haven't shown it, and I want to give this--piece of me to your hospital because I do love you and your big vision. Will you take it? It isn't much, but it comes straight from my heart."
"Not much!" cried Tom Daly. "Lois, it is everything."
And in a moment his arms were around her and there was nothing else in all the world but they two, mystically one in the fullness of their love each for the other.
So Spring brought with it quickened life and love to Tom Daly and Lois as it had done to Suzanne Morrison and her mother.
Spring, too, brought back Gus Nichols from his concert tour, a little thinner and tired looking as if the fire of his music had burned rather deep but with a new poise and dignity and manhood, along with his old boyish charm.
Mr. McIntosh was as happy as a child with a new toy at having the boy back, or rather as a child with an old toy, beloved and rediscovered. It was pleasant to see the two together, old man and lad, so different racially and temperamentally, yet so bound together by the ties of affection.
"Best job you ever did in your life, Sylvia Arden," Mr. McIntosh had observed one Sunday when he and Gus were taking dinner at the Hall. "Best job you ever did, when you persuaded me to adopt the boy. I can see you now, impertinent little witch that you were, sitting up and giving me advice like a grandmother. But it was good advice. I grant you that. You knew what you were talking about and talked to some purpose. See here, Sylvia--" The old man lowered his voice a little, though the others--Gus and Felicia and Doctor Daly--were engaged in conversation and could not hear, "do you think there is anything the matter with the lad? He doesn't look just happy to me. You don't think there can be a girl or any nonsense like that?"
Romance had always seemed more or less nonsense to Angus McIntosh, probably would unto the end, though years and affection had somewhat tempered his aversion for sentiment.
Sylvia looked up a little startled, remembering suddenly what she had almost forgotten--that unspoken thing she had read in the boy's eyes that night after his first concert. Gus, too, looked up at the moment, and as their gaze met Sylvia saw that the boy's had the fire and dew of a Galahad in them, the look of one who sees the Grail afar off. Her own eyes fell. She could not bear that shining, reverent look. It blinded her, shook her, quickened her, filled her with humility and compassion and envy. She perceived that Gus had found this thing which she herself seemed forever seeking with vain quest. In giving he had gained, in losing he had found.