“It is not me he misjudges, Alison, it is mankind, it is God. That is his terrible misfortune.” Hodder released her tenderly. “You must see him—you must tell him that when he needs you, you will come.”
“I will see him now, she said. You will wait for, me?”
“Now?” he repeated, taken aback by her resolution, though it was characteristic.
“Yes, I will go as I am. I can send for my things. My father has given me no choice, no reprieve,—not that I ask one. I have you, dear. I will stay with Mr. Bentley to-night, and leave for New York to-morrow, to do what I have to do—and then you will be ready for me.”
“Yes,” he said, “I shall be ready.”
He lingered in the well-remembered hall.... And when at last she came down again her eyes shone bravely through her tears, her look answered the question of his own. There was no need for speech. With not so much as a look behind she left, with him, her father's house.
Outside, the mist had become a drizzle, and as they went down the walk together beside the driveway she slipped her arm into his, pressing close to his side. Her intuition was perfect, the courage of her love sublime.
“I have you, dear,” she whispered, “never in my life before have I been rich.”
“Alison!”
It was all he could say, but the intensity of his mingled feeling went into the syllables of her name. An impulse made them pause and turn, and they stood looking back together at the great house which loomed the greater in the thickening darkness, its windows edged with glow. Never, as in this moment when the cold rain wet their faces, had the thought of its comfort and warmth and luxury struck him so vividly; yes, and of its terror and loneliness now, of the tortured spirit in it that found no rest.