She walked rapidly, avoiding the road to the little hamlet, and turning into a path that led her past the old house where Overton was born. At the moment she had not thought of it, but, as she approached, her mind returned to him and to the strange report which had so startled her wedding-guests. She thrust that away with an unconscious gesture of pride. She would not distrust Faunce; and to believe that Overton might still survive was to doubt his word. She battled against that with all her remaining strength, and tried to concentrate her thoughts on the beauty about her.
Summer was in the air, and the forces of nature, surviving the long conflict with the bitter winter, had gathered themselves together in a new and beautiful conquest of the earth. At her feet young blades of grass thrust themselves up through the black loam with been new life. The same rebirth seemed to breathe, too, in the tremulous swinging of delicate boughs and the tasseling of magnificent foliage. Overhead the crows flew by twos and tens and twenties, uttering their harsh cries.
It was not tranquil, for the wind stirred restlessly in the branches. Far off she heard the rush of a waterfall, and she could see the dark ring of the encircling hills. It seemed to her that a great, unseen army moved about her, and a mighty conflict was in progress. The dead earth had reawakened; birth, not death, was here. The sap was in the trees, and in the warm moss beneath her feet a myriad living things were struggling up toward the sun.
She stopped suddenly and stood still. Below her, ascending the same path, was the figure of a man. He was still a long way off, but she caught the big outline, the deliberate but easy step, the peculiar erectness of the head and shoulders.
She could not stir, but stood rooted to the spot, all the forces of life suspended. It was impossible either to doubt her own vision or to imagine that it was an apparition. The certainties of her own life dissolved before this solution of the riddle that had tormented her soul; for she knew, even before he approached her, that she stood face to face, not with a specter from the frozen pole, but with the living Overton.
A strange sensation, as if of personal guilt, overwhelmed her, and she shrank back with an involuntary feeling of panic. He did not observe it. He looked up, recognized her, and came forward with outstretched hands.
“Diane!”
She commanded herself with a supreme effort.
“It’s—it’s really you?”
He was holding her hands now, smiling down at her, deeply moved.