he promise he had kept, a great and
tender heart went down into the sea.

* * * * *

Sometimes the Sculptor, whose workshop is the world, fuses many metals
and casts a noble statue; leaves it for humanity to criticise, and when
time has mellowed both beauties and blemishes, removes it to that inner
studio, there to be carved in enduring marble.

Adam Warwick was such an one; with much alloy and many flaws; but
beneath all defects the Master's eye saw the grand lines that were to
serve as models for the perfect man, and when the design had passed
through all necessary processes,--the mould of clay, the furnace fire,
the test of time,--He washed the dust away, and pronounced it ready for
the marble.

CHAPTER XXI.

OUT OF THE SHADOW.

They had been together for an hour, the husband and the wife. The first
excitement was now over, and Sylvia stood behind him tearless and
tranquil, while Moor, looking like a man out of whom the sea had
drenched both strength and spirit, leaned his weary head against her,
trying to accept the great loss, enjoy the great gain which had befallen
him. Hitherto all their talk had been of Warwick, and as Moor concluded
the history of the months so tragically ended, for the first time he
ventured to express wonder at the calmness with which his hearer
received the sad story.

"How quietly you listen to words which it wrings my heart to utter. Have
you wept your tears dry, or do you still cling to hope?"

"No, I feel that we shall never see him any more; but I have no desire
to weep, for tears and lamentations do not belong to him. He died a
beautiful, a noble death; the sea is a fitting grave for him, and it is
pleasant to think of him asleep there, quiet at last."

"I cannot feel so; I find it hard to think of him as dead; he was so
full of life, so fit to live."

"And therefore fit to die. Imagine him as I do, enjoying the larger life
he longed for, and growing to be the strong, sweet soul whose
foreshadowing we saw and loved so here."

"Sylvia, I have told you of the beautiful change which befell him in
those last days, and now I see the same in you. Are you, too, about to
leave me when I have just recovered you?"

"I shall stay with you all my life."

"Then Adam was less to you than you believed, and I am more?"

"Nothing is changed. Adam is all he ever was to me, you are all you ever
can be; but I--"

"Then why send for me? Why say you