Nevertheless, the words possessed a strange fascination for her.
When she knelt in prayer and spoke his name, claiming Heaven’s tenderest care for the smitten one, the burning flush returned to her cheek, the thrill to her heart.
“Earle Wayne my lover!” she repeated, softly, as she laid her head upon her pillow, and her dreams were full of a manly face, with deep, dark eyes, in which shone a light tender and true, with lips that wore a smile as sweet and gentle as a woman’s, but such as no woman’s ever wore for her.
She still seemed to feel the clasp of his hand, the charm of his low spoken words, and the music of his voice and, when at length she awoke with the break of day, she was gay, careless Editha Dalton no longer.
A graver, quieter light looked out of her sunny eyes as she arose and dressed; lines of firmness and decision had settled about the smiling, happy mouth, and all the world had a deeper meaning for her than ever before.
“Standing, with reluctant feet,
Where the brook and river meet,
Womanhood and childhood fleet.”
It was as if she had suddenly turned a new page within her heart, and read thereon something which was to make her life in the future more beautiful and sacred, and yet which brought with the knowledge something of regret for the bright and careless days now gone forever.
She remembered that this was Earle’s first day in prison—the first of those long, long three years—and the tears sprang to her eyes, a sob trembled on her lips.