"Twenty years!" he repeated. "There has been full time for reflection, and, it may be, for repentance. Time for growing wiser and better."
Irene's eyelids drooped until the long lashes lay in a dark fringed line on her pale cheeks. When she lifted them they were wet.
"Yes, Hartley," she answered with much feeling, "there has been, indeed, time for reflection and repentance. It is no light thing to shadow the whole life of a human being."
"As I have shadowed yours."
"No, no," she answered quickly, "I did not mean that; as I have shadowed yours."
She could not veil the tender interest that was in her eyes; would not, perhaps, if it had been in her power.
At this moment a bell rang out clear and loud. Irene started and glanced from the window; then, rising quickly, she said—
"We are at the landing."
There was a hurried passage from cabin to deck, a troubled confusion of thought, a brief period of waiting, and then Irene stood on the shore and Hartley Emerson on the receding vessel. In a few hours miles of space lay between them.
"Irene, darling," said Mrs. Everet, as they met at Ivy Cliff on the next day, "how charming you look! This pure, sweet, bracing air has beautified you like a cosmetic. Your cheeks are warm and your eyes are full of light. It gives me gladness of heart to see in your face something of the old look that faded from it years ago."