"He knows!" she kept saying to herself, deep down below all words. "He knows! And he wants me to feel that it makes no difference!" It thrilled her like great music. Let the dark wave break, if it must; it could not rob her of the shining treasure. She could yet be loved, like other women. The darkness without would not be so dreadful, if all those lamps that Heaven meant to be lighted in a woman's soul were glowing!
They reached the crest of the knoll, where a dozen ragged white pines towered. Beneath them curved the lake, growing darker already as the western sky began to blaze. Olivia seated herself against one of the pines, and, removing her hat, leaned back contentedly. It was so good to breathe deep and free, to feel the breeze at her temples, to have the man who loved her reclining at her feet. All this could yet be hers, whatever happened!
And all at once, upon one of the lower branches of the pine, she was aware of a white blackbird. The utter surprise sent the color from her face; then it came flooding back again. In a tumult of unreasoning joy, of girlish superstition, she bent forward and caught Allan by the shoulder, pointing stealthily at the startled bird.
"The white blackbird!" she whispered, rapturously.
He glanced upward indifferently, wondering at Miss Lane's ecstatic face. He did not know that she cared particularly for birds.
"It's an albino," he remarked. "I've seen him three or four times this summer. They have one in the museum at St. Johnsbury."
"Hush!" exclaimed, Olivia, with a low, intense utterance that almost awed him. "It may sing!"
But the bird fluttered its cream-white wings, and disappeared into the upper branches of the pine.
"It's too late," said the geologist. "Blackbirds don't sing after midsummer."
"Oh, you don't understand!" she cried, half-starting from her seat and peering upward into the dusky, breeze-swept canopy. "The white blackbird is the Restorer of Sight!"