of the race.
And yet he had ceased to write that they might come no more.

If he had known how his own letters to her were welcomed, how tenderly
they were read and re-read, how sweetly kept and cherished.... But he did
not know! He could only look ahead, and strain on to the nearing goal with
the great, dim, mysterious curtain hanging beyond it, hearing the thudding
of his wearied heart, and the whistling of those sharp breaths in his
strained lungs, and the measured sound of his own footfalls bearing him on
to the end, while night closed in on her, fevered and wakeful in her bed,
thinking of him, praying for him, longing for the sight and sound of him.
Sleep, when it came now, brought her dreams less crystal than of old. Hued
with the fiery rose of opals some, because in these he loved her; and that
shadowy woman, in whose existence she only half-believed, had no part in
him at all. But on the night preceding the revelation she had not dreamed.

She awakened in the grey of dawn, when the thrushes were calling, and lay
straight and still, listening to the glad bird-voices from the garden, her
soft, fringed eyelids closed, her white breasts gently heaving, her small
feet crossed, her slender, bare arms pillowing the little Greek head; a
heavy plait of the silken wealth that crowned it drawn down on either side
of the sweet, pale face and the pure throat, intensifying their virginal
beauty. The dull smart of loneliness, the famished ache of loss, were gone
altogether. She felt strangely peaceful and calm and glad. Then she knew
she was not at Herion; she was not even in London.... She was back at the
Convent, in the little whitewashed room with the stained deal
furniture--the room with the pleasant outlook on the gardens that had been
hers from the first. Surely it was past the rising hour? Ah, yes! but she
had had a touch of fever. That was why she was lying here so quietly, with
the Mother sitting by the bed.

There could be no doubt.... The light firm, pressure that she knew of old
was upon her bosom, just above the beating of her heart.... That was
always the Mother's way of waking you. She sat beside you, and looked at
you, and touched you, and presently your eyes opened, that was all!...
Thinking this, a streak of gold glimmered between Lynette's thick dusky
lashes; her lips wore a smile of infinite content. She stole a glance, and
there it was, the large, beautiful, lightly clenched hand. The loose
sleeve of thi