Vaguely she felt around her the presence of an earth new born, of a new heaven created. She realized her own awakening; she strove to comprehend his resurrection, and it frightened her; she could not understand that what was dead through all these years was now alive, that the ideal she had clung to, evoking it until it had become part of her, was real—an actual and splendid living power. In this vivid resurgence she seemed to lose her precise recollections of him now that he was alive.
While she had believed him dead, everything concerning his memory had been painfully real—his personal appearance, the way he moved, turned, the sound of his voice, the touch of his hand as it tightened in hers when he lay there at sunset, while she and Death watched the color fading from his face.
But now—now that he was living—here in this same world with her again—strive as she would she could neither fix either his features nor the sound of his voice upon her memory. Only the stupefying wonder of it possessed her, dulling her senses so that even the happiness of it seemed unreal.
How would they meet?—they two, who had never met but thrice? How would they seem, each to the other, when first their eyes encountered?
In all their lives they had exchanged so little speech! Yet from the first—from the first moment, when she had raised her gaze to him as he entered in his long, blue cloak, her silence had held a deeper meaning than her speech. And on that blessed night instinct broke the silence; yet, with every formal word exchanged, consciousness of the occult bond between them grew.
But it was not until she thought him dead that she understood that it had been love—love unheralded, unexpected, incredible—love at the first confronting, the first encountering glance. And to the memory of that mystery she had been faithful from the night on which she believed he died.
How had it been with him throughout these years? How had it been with him?
The silvery trumpets of the cavalry were still sounding as she mounted her horse before the colonel’s tent and rode out into the splendour of the setting sun.
On every side cavalrymen were setting toe to stirrup; troop after troop, forming by fours, trotted out to the crest of the hill where the Western light lay red across the furrowed grass.