"We'll go away to Florida for a rest, Martha," I said, with the reassurance I found I had constantly to use to her. There was a great and beautiful tenderness in the soul of Martha, but she was completely lacking in any of the worldly initiative that makes lives move on. She seemed to be standing still.
"Yes, I'll go away," she answered softly, as she unclasped her hand from mine, nestled her face in the pillow and shut her eyes.
I left her to sleep and a year from that hour I knew that I had not understood the measure of her exhaustion. She faded like a flower and drifted on into eternity like a gossamer thread in the breeze.
And it was with some of the depression that a kind of maternal brooding over her gave me that I went out into the garden that night after all the rest had gone to bed. A pale silver moon-crescent poised on the brow of Old Harpeth and a tingling little breeze was coming down from the north as if sent as a warning of the winter soon to be upon us. I went down to the old graybeard poplars and their leaves seemed to hiss together in the moonlight instead of rustling softly as they had been all summer. A great many of them were drifted in dry waves on the grass and their gold was turned to silver in the moonlight. Many of the tall shrubs were naked ghosts of their former selves and gnashed their bones drearily. I leaned against the tallest old poplar and looked out across the valley with a kind of stillness in my heart that seemed to be listening and then listening.
"Oh, I'm thankful, thankful that strength has been given me to endure it all—life," I said to myself, almost under my breath. "And no matter what comes I can never lose it. I can go out into life now alone and—unafraid."
"'And whither thou goest I too will go, and thy—'" came the Gregorian chant from close beside me, and I turned to find the Harpeth Jaguar stalking me in the night.
Then for a long time we stood and looked at each other, he tearing away the veil from his man's heart and I laying aside that in my woman's breast.
"Oh, I've needed you so," I finally said, with a catch in my breath as I put my hands in his which he put palm to palm, then raised to his lips.
"You were in God's hands and I had to wait His time," he answered me. "And I would have waited until the stars burn dim. As near as loss came I never doubted. I had asked Him for you."
"I didn't know I was going to join your church this morning," I faltered. "I never intended to join your church. I was going to be either a Baptist or a Presbyterian. I was afraid to mix—my faith with—with you."