“Let me think!” she gasped. “Oh! let me think!” Then sadly: “I have lost my friend. I am so sorry—so sorry.”
“Yes,” Franz answered steadily, “you must choose now and forever between your friend and your lover.”
On the table beside Margaret's chair lay the book she had been reading that afternoon. A black bordered handkerchief was visible where it rested in the leaves of the half-opened volume marking her place. In their nervous wanderings her eyes fell upon it and their roving glance was instantly arrested.
The memory of what had been fell like a cloud, blotting out the present.
Franz saw the handkerchief, too, saw that she shrank from it. He stretched forth his hand and took up the bit of black and white. He held it in his tightened grasp until it was a crushed and crumpled heap in his broad palm, then it was dropped to be whirled up in momentary brightness by the fire.
Margaret gave a little cry. What it meant he knew, for it was glad, free and bouyant, as if a load had been lifted from her by the single act.
She put out her arms and Franz sank down on his knees before her. A new feeling surged into his heart. He had felt a man's desire for possession—now, when the victory was won, this was changed to infinite tenderness. He looked up into her face and saw what a woman's love was like, and he was well content.
“Margaret,” he said, “Margaret, has it all ended—the past? Has the new day dawned for us—for both of us?”
And Margaret, her hand resting on his shoulder, answered, “Yes.”
How long they were together after that neither of them knew. The happy moments are those that are never counted. Only misery has time to note the flight of time and to curse its slowness, grumbling at the lagging seconds.
But she had space to tell him of the life she had lived, the life that took its place that night with the things to be forgotten.
Perkins, returning from seeing his friends started on their journey, chanced to open the library door quietly and saw something which he subsequently described to Philip as “paralyzing.”
His face grew very red—so red, that the freckles on it looked white and sickly by comparison.
He closed the door softly and tiptoed to the opposite side of the hall where he stood for a long time lost in profound thought. He might have stood there for an indefinite period had he not heard some one come up the steps and fumble around in the outer darkness for the bell.