"The years went by, but the flower did not fade. Seeking, he always found it; weary, it always refreshed him; starving, it fed his soul. Blind, it gave him sight; weak, it gave him courage; hurt, it brought him balm. At last he lived only because of it, for, in some mysterious way, it seemed to need him, too, and sometimes it even seemed divinely to restore the lost.
"Flower of the Dusk," he said, leaning to Barbara; "what should I have been without you? How could I have borne it all?"
"God suits the burden to the bearer, I think," she answered, softly. "If you have much to bear, it is because you are strong enough to do it nobly and well. Only the weak are allowed to shirk, and shift their load to the shoulders of the strong."
"There is nothing to suppose, Daddy. Whatever happened would be the best that could happen. I'm not afraid."
Her voice rang clear and strong. Insensibly, he caught some of her own fine courage and his soul rallied greatly to meet hers. From her height she had summoned him as with a bugle-call, and he had answered.
"The ways of the Everlasting are not our ways," he said, "but I will not be afraid. No, I will not let myself be afraid."
The subtle, far-reaching fragrance of a Summer night came through the open window. A cool wind from the hills had set the maple branches to murmuring and hushed the incoming tide as it swept up to the waiting shore. Out in the illimitable darkness of the East, grey surges throbbed like the beating of a troubled heart, but the shore knew only the drowsy croon of a sea that has gone to sleep.
Golden lilies swung their censers softly, and the exquisite incense perfumed the dusk. Fairy lamp-bearers starred the night with glimmering radiance, faintly seen afar. A cricket chirped just outside the window and a ghostly white moth circled around the evening lamp.
Roger sat by the table, with Keats's letters to his beloved Fanny open before him. The letter to Constance, so strangely brought back after all the intervening years, lay beside the book. The ink was faded and the paper was yellow, but his father's love, for a woman not his mother, stared the son full in the face and was not to be denied.
Was this all, or--? His thought refused to go further. Constance North had died, by her own hand, four days after the letter was written. What might not have happened in four days? In one day, Columbus found a world. In another, electricity was discovered. In one day, one hour, even, some immeasurable force moving according to unseen law might sway the sun and set all the stars to reeling madly through the unutterable midnights of the universe. And in four days? Ah, what had happened in those four days?