"You'll find all you need in there, I think," Desmond said, on a note of profound understanding; and Lenox, putting a strong hand upon himself, pushed aside the heavy curtain and stood, at last, before his wife.
With a low cry, and arms outflung, she came to him; and that first rapture of reunion, of the heart's passionate upheaval and revealing—the more intense for the muteness of it—was a rapture sacred to themselves alone; not to be pried upon or set down. Such moments—come they but once in a lifetime, to one among a hundred—are God's reiterate answers to the problem of creation. The man or woman who has passed that way will never ask the soul's most withering question: To what end was I born? 'The rest may reason and welcome.' They are of the few who know.
Lenox and Quita swept headlong, as it were, to the crest of a wave, dropped presently back to earth. Then he set her a little away from him, almost at arm's-length, the better to feast his eyes upon the sight of her; and so became aware of the subtle change perceptible in her letters:—some exquisite quality, the fruit of long waiting, crowned by the miracle of motherhood; an appreciable softening of the lips; a triumph of the essential woman over mere line and curve that brought her near to actual beauty. But it was the new depth and tenderness in her eyes that drew and held him; eyes luminous, as never before, with the pride, the exaltation, of a consummate self-surrender,—not of necessity, but of free choice, the woman's utmost gift to her own one lover and compeer in all the world; if so be that she is privileged to find him, and if so be that he himself aspires to the larger claim. Eldred Lenox had so aspired; and, in consequence, had attained. Her mute confession of it stirred him to speech.
"I believe I have won the whole of you at last—you very woman," he said almost under his breath.
"And I know it," she answered in the same tone. "Do you remember saying that day you were angry: 'If you will make it a case of mastery——!' Well, it is a case of mastery—absolute and permanent."
She spoke truth. At that moment, and indeed for many years after, she would have walked, at his bidding, into the heart of a furnace. He drew her close again.
"No, no, lass. I hope it's a case of love and comradeship on an equal footing,—as you have seen it in this house; the rarest thing in the world between a man and woman."
Her smile brought into play the dimple that he loved.
"How one needs you at every turn, to keep the balance of things! But come over to my easel. I have something to show you."
Very deliberately she lifted the draperies that hid the picture, and a low sound broke from him. Then he stood gazing upon it,—absorbed, captivated; and whereas, a moment since, the woman had triumphed, now all the artist in her thrilled at his tribute of silence, knowing it for the highest praise.