"Now is the time," thought Jason, and after hanging a sheepskin over the little skin-covered window, he lit a candle and awakened Sunlocks.
Sunlocks rose and dressed himself without much speaking, and sometimes he sighed like a down-hearted man. But Jason rattled on with idle talk, and kindled a fire and made some coffee. And when this was done he stumbled his way through the long passages of the Iceland house until he came upon Greeba's room, and there he knocked softly, and she answered him.
She was ready, for she had not been to bed, and about her shoulders and across her breast was a sling of sheepskin, wherein she meant to carry her little Michael as he slept.
"All is ready," he whispered. "He says [he] may recover his sight. Can it be true?"
"Yes, the apothecary from Husavik said so," she answered.
"Then have no fear. Tell him who you are, for he loves you still."
And, hearing that, Greeba began to cry for joy, and to thank God that the days of her waiting were over at last.
"Two years I have lived alone," she said, "in the solitude of a loveless life and the death of a heartless home. My love has been silent all this weary, weary time, but it is to be silent no longer. At last! At last! My hour has come at last! My husband will forgive me for the deception I have practiced upon him. How can he hate me for loving him to all lengths and ends of love? Oh, that the blessed spirit that counts the throbbings of the heart would but count my life from to-day—to-day, to-day, to-day—wiping out all that is past, and leaving only the white page of what is to come."
Then from crying she fell to laughing, as softly and as gently, as if her heart grudged her voice the joy of it. She was like a child who is to wear a new feather on the morrow, and is counting the minutes until that morrow comes, too impatient to rest, and afraid to sleep lest she should awake too late. And Jason stood aside and heard both her weeping and her laughter.
He went back to Sunlocks, and found him yet more sad than before.