“Will you stay?” he asked gently, his eyes holding hers.
She did not answer at once. It seemed as if she took that moment to think, to concentrate all her powers of mind and heart on the one supreme choice that was so vital to them both, the choice between the risks and the hardships of the frozen pole and the safety of her father’s house—without her husband. There was no question of a quarrel now, the judge had forgiven him, he would stand by his word. In his brusque way, Herford was holding out his hand to Faunce. To go to him would not be an insult to her husband, but, if she left him now, he must face the struggle alone and she had pledged herself to face it with him. She had pledged herself, and she desired it more than anything else in the world—except the safety of that little life which might come in peril and cold and mist, like a pledge of their faith to each other, and her belief that her husband would redeem himself!
It seemed a long moment before she answered, and then, with a mute, adorable gesture, she laid her cheek against his sleeve.
“I’m not afraid,” she said in her low, vibrating, beautiful voice, “I’m going with you, Arthur.”
He made no answer in words, an inarticulate murmur was all that escaped him. But he held her close and she seemed to feel the thrill that her assurance gave him. She was no longer an outsider, no longer a hostile critic at his fireside, they were united, their marriage was no longer merely a physical, it was a spiritual union. Henceforth she must share not only his victories, but his defeats, and in both, in one as much as in the other, he would be dear to her, for she no longer doubted him, she knew the worst that he had done, and she knew, too, that he had repented and that now, purged by his long spiritual conflict, he was in reality stronger than she was.
In the days which followed, days in which she wrote fully and lovingly to her father, she was again conscious of a new and great tranquillity. She had passed through the fiery furnace of her trial, she had drained the cup of doubt to its dregs, and now she looked calmly into that future that held for her the greatest of all trials, and the most tender of all hopes.
The same thought was with her the day the ship sailed. It had been a day of conflict for Faunce, a day of trial, for he had had to face the publicity and the questions, but he had shown a strength and composure that amazed himself. As he had told Diane, his confession had freed him, he was no man’s slave, he had nothing to fear, and he faced the future with a courage so high that it transformed him. Diane saw it. She stood beside him as the ship, slipping its moorings in the North River, dropped down the bay. It was a day of clouds, and a light fog hung like a veil about the great city, it made the distant streets appear like deep incisions between the towering sky-scrapers, and the crowded battery was lightly touched with mist. Above the gray clouds drifted, below the dark water lapped, but Diane lifted her eyes to the face of her husband. Faunce was calm; he was very pale but his eyes glowed and his lips closed firmly. There was power in the face and conflict and hope.
Suddenly, the gray clouds parted and showed a rift of exquisite blue, like a window in heaven, and a shaft of sunlight shot across the sky, it touched the clouds with gold and it glinted on the towering figure of Liberty bearing aloft her torch to light the world.
In the far distance the mists over the narrows grew soft and luminous as Diane looked into them. She did not look back, she looked forward. Out of that future, out of those clouds and that golden glory, she seemed to see the form of her husband—no longer fallen and defeated, but coming back to her in the semblance that she had dreamed, clothed with powers at once mortal and spiritual, and wearing the laurels of victory.
THE END