“It will not distress me if I can take him, before he dies, a simple message.”
“You sent me a message. How did you know that it was a message?”
“I knew it was a message, because I saw it with my mind’s eye written clear and bright, and because I heard it plain and unmistakable. It came to me in the night. I thought it was a dream. Now I think it was a message.”
“You said that all the misfortunes were over. Like your message, it was a dream. Yet now we get this telegram.”
“Why—do you call this a misfortune? What better can we desire for that poor old man but the end?”
They started at once; they caught a train which landed them at the nearest station a little before seven. It was an evening in early spring. The sun was sinking, the cloudless sky was full of peace and light, the air was as soft as it was fragrant; there was no rustle of branches, even the birds were hushed.
“It is the end,” said Constance softly, “and it is peace.”
They had not spoken since they started together for the station. When one knows the mind of his companion, what need for words?
Presently they turned from the road into the park. It was opposite the stile over which, seventy years ago, one man had passed on his way to death, and another, less fortunate, on his way to destruction.
“Let us sit down in this place,” said Leonard. “Before we go on I have something to say—I should like to say it before we are face to face with that most unhappy of men.”