“God bless him!” burst from the lips of the bowed man.
“Finally he dropped to sleep,” Mrs. Barry went on, “and slept, still sobbing, as children do when wrought up high, and she left him and came again to me. Poor thing! She was simply undone—conquered! She put her head in my lap and burst out crying. She sobbed and sobbed a long time, and then I asked her if she would let me manage it. She knew what I meant—exactly what I meant, for she became like a lump of clay in my lap. For a long time she lay like that, hardly breathing. Then I told her of what a wonderful influence she had been to me in opening my eyes, old as I am, to the beauty of a higher, spiritual life, and that in holding back, as she was now doing, and refusing to pardon a repentant man, even when the happiness of her own child was at stake, she was going backward instead of forward. She seemed to realize it. She sat up straight, and the old light of sweetness and gentleness seemed to dawn in her face. 'I'll simply put myself in your hands, mother,' she said—'in your hands!'
“I broke down and cried in pure joy, Kenneth Galt. Then what do you think? I heard her go back to her room, and knew that the child had waked. I am not sure; but I think she waked him purposely, for she never could bear to have him go to sleep unhappy. I heard her telling him about the beauty of Paris—about its streets, its boulevards, and its parks; its buildings; its statuary and pictures, and of the pretty children who were to be his friends. She laughed like a happy child—they were always like two children, anyway—when she told him about crossing the ocean in a great ship, and of the high waves, deep water, and big fish. But he stopped her with a question. What do you think it was, Kenneth? He wanted to know if you were going? I knew she hesitated, her pride closing her lips, even there alone with her child. She wouldn't answer his question. Then I heard Lionel say plainly, and there was a strange sort of stubborness in his little voice: 'Well, I don't want to go; he would not want me to leave him; he said so once; he said he would never leave me, and I wasn't to leave him. Is he going, mother?' he kept asking.
“Then I heard her say, 'Yes, darling, he is going—now you can sleep!'”
“She said that? Did she say that?” Galt cried, his whole despondent being aflame.
“Yes; it is settled, Kenneth. Perhaps, in time, you and she will be thoroughly happy together. I don't know, but I hope so.”
“Thank God!” Galt said, fervently, and, taking the old woman's hand, he wrung it in an ecstasy of delight. “I only wanted a chance, Mrs. Barry. I shall devote my life to all of you, and we can be happy—gloriously happy over there. She shall be our queen, and Lionel our little prince. I'll have this old house kept in order, and some day we'll come back to it.”
“Then here is my plan,” Mrs. Barry said. “Meet us in Atlanta the day after to-morrow, and we shall be ready to sail. I'll let you know what hotel we go to. The news will come back from there, but we sha'n't be here during the reception of it. Now, I'm glad, for your sake as well as ours, that it is all going to turn out well. I want to see you happy. You have suffered enough, and so has she. As for me, I never was so happy in my life. I want to go to Paris for a while. My husband is buried there, you know.”