not wait; she went up the graveyard path and in where the
great square windows cast each a strip of light athwart the dark pews.
Ephraim turned from his errand and met her in the aisle.

"Ephraim."

Ephraim Croom fell back a step or two, as if his breath was set too
quick by joy or fear.

Susannah could not speak again.

At length Ephraim stretched out his hands and grasped her arms gently,
then more strongly, making sure that she was not a trick of light and
shade. Then, not knowing at all what he did, he clasped her in sudden
haste to his breast.

Susannah felt his arms wrap about her as if she had been a little child.
She had never felt, never conceived, of closeness and tenderness like
this. Ephraim, his breast heaving and his arms folding closer and
closer, was out of himself. There was no conscious meaning expressed by
him, but she knew, knew at once without shadow of doubt that he himself
had been the dreamer of whom he wrote to her, who had learned so much by
yielding all the loves of his heart to one, and that she was that woman.

It was a long moment; at last, as if waking from a dream, Ephraim
relinquished his hold. He leaned against the side of a pew, and his
eager look seemed to hold and fold her still. In the dim light she could
not see his eye, but she felt the delight of his glance falling upon
her, a brighter, softer influence than the mantle of the moonlight.

She laid a hand lightly on his shoulder with a motherly touch.

"I have startled you, dear Ephraim; I hope I have done you no harm."

He made as yet no answer but to take her hand, grasping it with rough
heartiness as if this was the first moment of their meeting.

Susannah laughed as women sometimes laugh over their cherished ones for
very joy, not amusement. "Speak to me," she coaxed. "I have come back to
you. Do you think we are in a dream?" She let herself kneel on the old
floor of the old aisle, and, clasping both his hands, laid them against
her cheek.

With his returning self, something of his habitual formality of manner
would have returned had she remained in any common attitude, but to this
coaxing, kneeling queen Ephraim (although his whole life had passed
without caresses) could not behave with reticence.

One thing he did not do. He did not hint that it was unseemly that she
should kneel at his feet. Chivalry was the very substance of the soul of
this son of New England, and no outward seeming could disturb his serene