“‘My brother was too late,’ said Anna.
“‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I was grieved for him. I added a postscript unknown to her, to her last letter to him which I wrote at her dictation. My postscript would have alarmed him and brought him at once. But the letter must have been delayed in the post. The last night before the end I was sitting here on the verandah. I had just been relieved, and I ought to have gone to bed, but I came and sat here instead and watched the dawn come up, ‘like thunder,’ behind the moors. And as I sat I became very still, as if I were waiting in a great peace. And gradually I became conscious as at an immense distance of someone in trouble. I was not asleep, and I was not fully awake. And from a long, long way off a man came swiftly to me, and threw himself on his knees at my feet, and hid his face in my gown. He was greatly agitated, but I was not. And I wasn’t surprised either. I raised him in my arms, and held him to my breast, and said, “Do not be distressed, for I love you, and all is well.” It was quite true. I did love him absolutely, boundlessly, as I love him still. And gradually his agitation died away, and he rested in my arms, and ecstasy such as I had never thought possible enfolded us both. We both cried for sheer joy, and for having found each other. It was beyond anything I had ever dreamed. It was as beautiful as the dawn.’
“‘It was the dawn,’ said Anna.
“‘If it was the dawn, the day it spoke of never came,’ said the stranger quietly, ‘and presently we were parted from each other, and he began to be frightened again. And he called to me, ‘Tell me how to find you,’ and I laughed, for I saw he could not miss me. I saw the way open between him and me. Such a short little way, and so clear. I said, ‘You are on your way to me now. You will find me on the high road.’ It was such a plain road, that even a blind man could not miss it. And we were parted from each other and I came back to the other dawn, the outer dawn. For days and weeks I walked like one in a dream. I felt so sure of him, I would have staked my life upon his coming—that is ten years ago—but he never came.’
“Chipps, I thought the two women must have heard the mad hammering of my heart. She was there before me in the moonlight, found at last—my beautiful, inaccessible mate. And she was free, and we loved each other as no one had loved since the world began. I could neither speak nor move. Though it was joy, it was the sharpest pain I had ever known. I did not know how to bear it.
“‘My dear, he will come still,’ said Anna.
“‘Will he?’ said the stranger, and she shook her head. She rose and stood in the moonlight, a tall, noble figure. And for the first time there was a shade of sadness on her serene, happy face.
“‘I saw the road so clear,’ she said, ‘but I am afraid he has somehow missed it. I have an intuition that he will not come now, that he is lost.’
“Sitting far back in the shadow, I looked long at her, at my wonderful dream came true; and I swore that I would never lose sight of her again once found. I would take no risks; I would bind her to me with hooks of steel.