er, friend,
and physician, all in one. He understood. He told me to go away; he got
you for me. He told me to play like a little girl, with only the real and
beautiful things of life; to forget the worries, and he would make sure!

"Priscilla, he has made sure! My love is safe. I can give myself to my
love and let it have its way with me, and in the beautiful future, our
future, his and mine, little children cannot--curse us by their suffering
and deformity.

"This _must_ be the heritage a woman should be able to give her children,
or she has no right to her own love. God has been so good to me--he has
not asked for sacrifice; but"--here she spoke fiercely--"I was ready to
sacrifice my love--for I had seen my friend's baby!

"I had never known God before as I know him now. He came to me with love
and faith and my glorious life. Before, my God was a prayer-book God; a
dead thing that only rustled when we touched him; and now, oh! Cilla, he
is alive and breathing in good men and women, in little children, in all
the beautiful, real things. They did not bury my God, or yours, long ago;
they only set him free for us to find and love and follow."

They clung to each other in a passion of reverence and happiness, and
then kissed each other good night.

CHAPTER XXII

"My girl," said Travers a week later, "how shall it be? May I tell every
one how madly happy I am? May I take you to that little shrine a mile up
the mountain yonder and make you--mine--and then show them all _why_ I
am so happy? Or----"

"Yes. Or----" Priscilla lay quite contentedly in his arms, her eyes on
the shining outlines of The Ghost.

"And that means, my sweet?"

"That we should keep this blessed secret just a little longer--to
ourselves. I feel as if I could not bear to have it explained, defended,
or justified, and all that must follow, my very dear man, when the play
is over and we return to--to school. I shall be glad and ready to do all
this a little later on; proud to have you do it for me, and--we'll face
the music. It is going to be music, dear, I am sure of that. But some
very stern questions will be asked by that sweet mother of yours, and she
shall have her answer. Then Doctor Ledyard, with all the prayer gone from
his eyes, will call me up for judgment and demand to know what right a
nurse, even a white nurse, had to lay hands upon a young physician who
was on the road to glory! It will be hard to answer him; but never mind!"