Her eyes were asking what there could be that she would not do for him.
"Then laugh, Katie. Oh if you could know how I've longed to hear you laugh again."
She did laugh, but a sob overtook the laugh. Then laughed again and ran away from the sob. But the laugh was sweeter for the sob.
"You will laugh, Katie, won't you?" he asked with an anxiety that touched deep things.
"Why there'll be days and days when I shan't do anything else!" Then her laughing eyes grew serious. "Though just a little differently, I think. I've heard the world sobbing, you know."
"But a world that is sobbing needs Katie's laughing." He drew her to him with something not unlike a sob. "I need it, I know."
There was a wonderful sense of saving herself in knowing again that the world was sobbing. What she could have borne no longer was drowning the world's sobs in the world's hollow laughter.
"Katie," he cried, after more time had elapsed without finding either the astonishing stone or the astounding flower, "here's a little sunny path! I want you to walk in it."
Laughingly he pushed her over into the narrow strip of sunshine, where there was just room for Katie's feet.
But Katie shook her head. "What do I care about sunny paths, if I must walk them alone?" And laughing, too, but with a deepening light in her eyes, she held out her hand to him.