Hetty cast her eyes down. Words did not come. It would have been easier
to have said them while she was held close to Doctor Eben's side.
Suddenly, before he had a suspicion of what she was about to do, she had
darted away, was lost in the darkness, and in a second more he heard her
door shut at the farther end of the hall.

Dr. Eben laughed a low and pleasant laugh. "She might as well have said
it," he thought: "she will say it to-morrow. I have won!" and he sank
into the great white dimity-covered chair, at the head of Raby's bed,
and looked into the fire. The very coals seemed to marshal themselves
into shapes befitting his triumph: castles rose and fell; faces grew,
smiled, and faded away smiling; roses and lilies and palms glowed ruby
red, turned to silver, and paled into spiritual gray. The silence of the
night seemed resonant with a very symphony of joy. Still Sally and Raby
slept on. The boy's sweet face took each hour a more healthful tint;
and, as Doctor Eben watched the blessed change, he said to himself:

"What a night! what a night! Two lives saved! Raby's and mine." As the
morning drew near, he threw up the shades of the eastern window, and
watched for the dawn. "I will see this day's sun rise," he said with a
thrill of devout emotion; and he watched the horizon while it changed
like a great flower calyx from gray to pearly yellow, from yellow to
pale green, and at last, when it could hold back the day no longer, to a
vast rose red with a golden sun in its centre.




IX.