of unearthly radiance descended and finding its way to the uplifted
transfigured face of the kneeling pilgrim ended there.
Tony Holiday understood, got the message as clearly as if Alan himself
stood beside her to interpret it. She knew that he was telling her
through the picture that she had saved his soul, kept him out of the
abyss, that to the end she was what he had so often called her--his star.
With tear blinded eyes she turned from the canvas to the little silver
box which the servant had placed in her hands together with a sealed
envelope. In the box was a gorgeous, unset ruby, the gem of Alan's
collection as Tony well knew having worshiped often at its shrine. It lay
there now against the austere purity of its white satin background--the
symbol of imperishable passion.
Reverently Tony closed the little box and opened the sealed envelope
dreading yet longing to know its contents. Alan had sent her no word of
farewell, had not written to her that night before he went out into the
storm to meet his death, had made no response to the letter she herself
had written offering herself and her love and faith for his taking. At
first these things had hurt her. But these gifts of his were beginning to
make her understand his silence. Selfish and spectacular all his life at
his death Alan Massey had been surpassingly generous and simple. He had
chosen to bequeath his love to her not as an obsession and a bondage but
as an elemental thing like light and air.
The message in the envelope was in its way as impersonal as the ruby had
been but Tony found it more hauntingly personal than she had ever found
his most impassioned love letter. Once more the words were couched in the
symbol tongue of the poet in India--in only two sentences, but sentences
so poignant that they stamped themselves forever on Tony Holiday's mind
as they stood out from the paper in Alan's beautiful, striking
handwriting.
"When the lighted lamp is brought into the room
I shall go.
And then perhaps you will listen to the night, and
hear my song when I am silent."
The lines were dated on that unforgettable night when Tony had played
Broadway and danced her last dance with her royal lover. So he had known
even then that he was giving her up. Realizing this Tony realized as she
never had before the high quality of his love. She could guess a little
of what that night had meant to him, how passionately he must have
desired to win through
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