“Then you haven’t met him since he left me?”
“No, my love. Is he out? I haven’t met him.”
Lizzie sat down with a confused sense of relief, which welled up to her throat and made speech difficult.
Suddenly light came to Andora. “I understand, dearest. Youdon’t feel able to see him yourself. You want me to go to him for you.” She looked about her, scenting the battle. “You’re right, darling. As soon as he comes in I’ll go to him. The sooner we get it over the better.”
She followed Lizzie, who without answering her had turned mechanically back to the window. As they stood there, the gate moved again, and Deering entered the garden.
“There he is now!” Lizzie felt Andora’s fervent clutch uponher arm. “Where are the letters? I will go down at once. You allow me to speak for you? You trust my woman’s heart? Oh, believe me, darling,” Miss Macy panted, “I shall know just what to say to him!”
“What to say to him?” Lizzie absently repeated.
As her husband advanced up the path she had a sudden trembling vision of their three years together. Those years were her wholelife; everything before them had been colorless and unconscious, like the blind life of the plant before it reaches the surface ofthe soil. They had not been exactly what she dreamed; but if they had taken away certain illusions, they had left richer realities in their stead. She understood now that she had gradually adjusted herself to the new image of her husband as he was, as he would always be. He was not the hero of her dream, but he was the man she loved, and who had loved her. For she saw now, in this last wide flash of pity and initiation, that, as a solid marble may bemade out of worthless scraps of mortar, glass and pebbles, so outof mean mixed substances may be fashioned a love that will bear the stress of life.
More urgently, she felt the pressure of Miss Macy’s hand.
“I shall hand him the letters without a word. You may rely, love, on my sense of dignity. I know everything you’re feeling at this moment!”
Deering had reached the doorstep. Lizzie continued to watch him in silence till he disappeared under the glazed roof of the porch below the window; then she turned and looked almost compassionately at her friend.
“Oh, poor Andora, you don’t know anything—you don’t know anything at all!” she said.
THE END
End of Project Gutenberg’s Tales Of Men And Ghosts, by Edith Wharton
