He did not see the ironical glance which passed between nurse and doctor, materialists both. He had stooped and kissed his wife, who lay on the wheeled table that was to carry her to the operating room. She was asleep, for the narcotic had taken immediate effect.
For a moment he hung over her and then he moved aside. When the door of the operating room had closed on the wheeled table with its sheeted burden he stepped out on the little upper balcony beneath the stars, knelt, and earnestly addressed himself to his Maker.
A distant clock struck eight. The operation would take an hour....
Humbly he prayed, but with superb confidence. He had lived a blameless life, and his efforts were in behalf of a life equally blameless. It was inconceivable that he who had given all and asked nothing should be refused this, his first request. It was even more inconceivable that his wife, who was so worthy of pardon, should be condemned. Humbly he prayed, but not without assurance of a friendly Auditor.
It was a sweet May night, satin-soft, blossom-scented. The south wind was whispering confidences to the elms; the stars were unutterably benign. Surely God was in His heaven, thought the Reverend Paul Templeton.
Then up from the darkness beneath the trees came the low, thrilling laugh of a girl. He lifted his face from his hands and stared, scarce breathing, into the night, while his ears still held every note of that low, thrilling laugh, which spoke of youth in love in the springtime.
The black bulk of the hospital behind him faded into obscurity as swiftly as a scene struck on a darkened stage. He was no longer on a little upper porch, but in an old-fashioned summer-house, hidden from the tactless moon by a mesh of honeysuckle in bloom. He was no longer on his knees before his Maker, but sitting beside the girl who had been Ellen McCartney.
She was dressed in white. She was so close he could feel the warmth of her. Somehow, in that darkness, their hands met and clung, shoulder touched shoulder—the fragrance of her hair in his nostrils. The soft, womanly yielding of her body.
Now her palms were resting against his cheeks, drawing his head down; now, as lightly as a butterfly upon a flower, her lips brushed his one closed eye and then the other; now she laughed, a low, thrilling laugh, which spoke of youth in love in the springtime.
Prayer had gone dry at its source, choked by the luxuriant vegetation of memory. He remembered other kisses and thrilled in sympathy with the delight of other time....