“I would not say everything,” temporised Margaret, “but it is true that much comes that way. We know happiness only by contrast.”
“Happiness and misery, light and dark, sunshine and storm, life and death,” mused Lynn. “Yes, it is by contrast, but, as the Master says, ‘the balance swings true.’ I wish you knew him, mother; he has helped me. I never knew my father, so it is not wrong for me to say that I wish he might have been my father.”
Margaret grew as cold as ice, and her senses reeled, then flame swept her from head to foot. “Come,” she said, not knowing her own voice, “it is late.”
Long afterward, in the solitude of her room, she took the precious thought from its hiding-place, and found it purest gold. It was as though all the bitterness in her heart, growing upward, through the years, had flowered overnight into a perfect rose.
XVIII
Lynn Comes Into His Own
At the post-office there was a letter for Mrs. Irving. Lynn took it, with a lump rising in his throat, for, though he had never seen her handwriting, he knew, through a sixth sense, that it was from Iris. Evidently, it was a brief communication, for the envelope contained not more than a single sheet. The straight, precise slope of the address had an old-fashioned air. It was very different from the modern angular hand which demands a whole line for two or three words.
In some way, it brought her nearer to him, and in the shadow of the maple, just outside the house, he kissed the superscription before he took it in.