now, as if bowing herself in silent prayer, she kneeled beside the
bed and laid her head close to the baby's. Philip stood
motionless, his unseeing eyes staring straight through the log
walls and the black night to a city a thousand miles away. He
understood now. Josephine's story was not the strangest thing in
the world after all. It was perhaps the oldest of all stories. He
had heard it a hundred times before, but never had it left him
quite so cold and pulseless as he was now. And yet, even as the
palace of the wonderful ideal he had builded crumbled about him in
ruin, there rose up out of the dust of it a thing new-born and
tangible for him. Slowly his eyes turned to the beautiful head
bowed in its attitude of prayer. The blood began to surge back
into his heart. His hands unclenched. She had told him that he
would hate her, that he would want to leave her when he heard the
story of her despair. And instead of that he wanted to kneel
beside her now and take her close in his arms, and whisper to her
that the sun had not set for them, but that it had only begun to
rise.

And then, as he took a step toward her, there flashed through his
brain like a disturbing warning the words with which she had told
him that he would never know the real cause of her grief. "YOU MAY
GUESS, BUT YOU WOULD NOT GUESS THE TRUTH IF YOU LIVED A THOUSAND
YEARS." And could this that he had heard, and this that he looked
upon be anything but the truth? Another step and he was at her
side. For a moment all barriers were swept from between them. She
did not resist him as he clasped her close to his breast. He
kissed her upturned face again and again, and his voice kept
whispering: "I love you, my Josephine--I love you--I love you--"