even if now ...

She looked timidly up the green tunnel of the arching trees, fearing
to see him at any moment. And yet how she hastened her steps towards
where he was! The moments were too long till she should find her
heart's home!

After a time, there came a moment of such terrible throbbing of the
heart, such trembling, that she could not go on. She sat down on a
rock beside the road and pressed her shaking hands on her cheeks. No,
it was too awful. She had been insane to think of putting everything,
her whole life, to the test of a moment's shock. She would go back.
She would write him....

She looked up and saw her mother's gallant figure standing there
before her. She smiled, and started on. Strange that she had thought
her mother could be dead. Her first instinct had been right. Her
mother, _her_ mother could not die.

The road turned sharply to the left. She came out from the white
birches. She was in the edge of the pasture, sweet-fern at her feet,
a group of sheep raising startled heads to gaze at her, the sun's rim
red on the horizon below her. And up there, the sunlight on his face,
above her, stood Austin.

The sight of him was like a great burst of music in her heart, like a
great flood of light. Her doubts, her uncertainties, they were gone
out, as utterly as night goes before the sun. Her ears rang to a sound
like singing voices. For a moment she did not feel the ground under
her feet....

Austin looked down and saw her. He stood like a man in a dream.

And then he knew. He knew. And Sylvia knew. He gave a great cry
of welcome which was to ring in her ears for all her life, like a
benediction. He ran down to meet her, and took her in his arms.

THE END

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