She was sleeping now. So cunningly he crept into the room that she did not stir. He listened to the gentle rise and fall of her soft breath. Good woman! brave woman! He tiptoed past the bed to where the window was and managed to draw up the clever new-fangled blinds without making a sound. Yes, there was the star. That was all he wanted to see. Faint it was, so faint that faith was needed to believe that it was a star. But there was nothing else it could be.
The little sobbing voice, now no more than a whisper, that, too, was out there. Jim's voice ... cracked he must be ... such sloppy notions ... the wind along that damned canal....
Suddenly he turned from the star. At the beck of a queer impulse he knelt by the bed, burying his eyes in the soft counterpane. He prayed for the Chaps. He prayed for Melia. He prayed for the life that lay with her, the life coming to them so miraculously they knew not whence, after all those years.
Could it be that Jim was coming back to complete his great beginnings? Coming back to witch the world with beauty? Just a fancy. But everything was just a fancy. Jim had said so once, looking at the sunset on the bank of that canal.
The months went by. In the meantime, upon the fields of France, was being decided the fate of the world for generations to come. Day followed day whose story will echo down the ages, but in the cottage with the green shutters at the head of the valley there was little to indicate that it was a time of destiny.
The Corporal was allowed to return to his old regiment. Experience had made him doubly valuable and its ranks had been grievously thinned. After three months at the Depôt he was sent to France.
When at the end of July he came home on draft leave to bid Melia good-by, her time was drawing near. And in spite of the burdens life had laid upon them, the feeling now uppermost was a subtle sense of triumph. In the final bitterness of conflict the dark Fates had given them courage to bear their heads high.
A strange reward was coming to them, bringing with it new obligations, new responsibilities. But they were not afraid. Somewhere, a Friend was helping them. It must be so, or else the dire perils to which they had been exposed would not have allowed their happiness to bear so late a flower. Besides, they had been given a specific token that in the sum of things they mattered.