he summer lies fair before us. Listen while
I tell thee of news that the Esperance brought."

While I told of new orders from the Company to the Governor and of my
letter from Buckingham, the minister rested upon his oars that he might
hear the better. When I had ceased to speak he bent to them again, and
his tireless strength sent us swiftly over the glassy water toward the
town that was no longer distant. "I am more glad than I can tell you,
Ralph and Jocelyn," he said, and the smile with which he spoke made his
face beautiful.

The light streaming to us from the ruddy west laid roses in the cheeks
of the sometime ward of the King, and the low wind lifted the dark hair
from her forehead. Her head was on my breast, her hand in mine; we cared
not to speak, we were so happy. On her finger was her wedding ring, the
ring that was only a link torn from the gold chain Prince Maurice had
given me. When she saw my eyes upon it, she raised her hand and kissed
the rude circlet.

The hue of the sunset lingered in cloud and water, and in the pale
heavens above the rose and purple shone the evening star. The cloudlike
ship at which we had gazed was gone into the distance and the twilight;
we saw her no more. Broad between its blackening shores stretched the
James, mirroring the bloom in the west, the silver star, the lights upon
the Esperance that lay between us and the town. Aboard her the mariners
were singing, and their song of the sea floated over the water to us,
sweetly and like a love song. We passed the ship unhailed, and glided on
to the haven where we would be. The singing behind us died away, but the
song in our hearts kept on. All things die not: while the soul lives,
love lives: the song may be now gay, now plaintive, but it is deathless.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of To Have and To Hold, by Mary Johnston

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