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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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