“It is the truth.”
He left the shadows of the tree and stood again at the girl’s side. His fingers touched Joan’s. Standing hand in hand, they looked out over the sea at the sun sinking in a whorl of lambent fire.
“I am no longer afraid.”
“Nor I, save for your sake.”
“Ah, Gabriel, what is sacrifice but love transfigured?”
The clouds were paling in the west; a glamour of light still poured upward into the heavens.
“Had I been less a fool,” he said, “I could have saved all this. Thank God, I am no longer clay, to be thumbed by circumstance!”
“And yet,” she said, with a deep inrush of heroism.
“Well?”
“I would not have had it otherwise. It is the fire that refines and tempers. It is by battle that we overcome the world.”