Surely he knew that voice! He turned, and there before his blinded vision stood the realization of his dream, holding the boy by the hand! One swift glance showed him that she was in street attire; that she was not a member of the Order. She saw and recognized him at the same instant. With a mighty cry of joy and thanksgiving he clasped her in his arms.
“O, that ’twere possible,
After long grief and pain,
To find the arms of my true love
Round me once again!”
Sappho was welcomed right royally by Doctor Lewis, Dora and her mother, as one risen from the dead; tears, smiles, kisses greeted her. It seemed that they would never be able to control their emotion. Then she told them of her flight to New Orleans with the child, of the death of the old fortune-teller, and her own employment as a governess in the family of the wealthy colored planter in Opelousas, and the placing of the boy with the Sisters. She in her turn listened with wonder to the fairylike tale of the wealth that had come to her lover’s family.
Late that afternoon she sat once again in close heart communion with her lover. Each had much to tell.
Seated beside her on the sofa, Will folded her closely to his heart again with one deep, heavy sob which attested the man’s suppressed anguish.
“Oh,” he said, at last, “it has been like a hideous nightmare since I read that letter which you sent me. I can scarcely believe in the blessed reality that I hold you safe in my arms once more.”
She put back the clustering curls from his brow, noting with pain the many white hairs which threaded those raven locks. She laid her cheek against his as she said:
“I know only too well all you have gone through.”
“Why did you leave me, Sappho? Had you no confidence in my love for you? How meanly you must have judged me if you thought me capable of holding you responsible for the monstrous wrong committed against you.”
“Ah, Will; I had suffered so much at the hands of selfish men! Can you wonder that I mistrusted you, and felt that you would only despise me when you knew all?”
Then he told her of his interview with John Langley, holding back nothing but the insulting insinuations.
“But, dearest, the detectives were at the convent; they even interviewed Luke Sawyer. Poor fellow, he was completely overcome when he found that you were alive, and he dropped his work and devoted months to tracing your whereabouts in this very city. How you have managed to hide yourself, and Dora living right here in New Orleans with you, is the mystery.”
“Yes; but it is an easy matter to become lost in a great city like this. You must remember that I kept away from every familiar spot; even the Sisters in the convent had been changed, so that there was no one to remember me, the former Mother Superior having died. When I was strong enough to go about, you had ceased searching for me.”
“And all this secrecy was for what?” asked Will reproachfully.
“I thought it was for the best.”
“I loved you, Sappho; could you not trust that love?”
“Ah, Will, forgive me for all the suffering I have caused you.”
Will laid his cheek to hers. “What is there I would not forgive, if anything there were to forgive, for the sweet comfort of holding you once again to my desolate heart.”
Then she wept a few delicious tears within the shelter of his arms, and he told her of his plans for her and the boy. They would go abroad; but first they would seek out Luke Sawyer and reward him for his faithfulness; everyone who had ever been kind to her or the boy should be rewarded.
That evening Will accompanied Sappho home. Alphonse was left with Dora. Monsieur Louis was astonished to see a handsome stranger assisting Sappho from the carriage. Her joyous face told its own story, and the kind old man knew instinctively that she had found her lover and he had lost the joy of his old age. Will was delighted with all he saw and heard in the peaceful, happy home, the refuge of his love. In the soft twilight of the fragrant terrace Sappho told Monsieur Louis her story, her hand tightly clasped in Will’s. “Ah!” cried Monsieur Louis, “I thought it; I thought it!” Then Will supplemented it with the romantic history of his family, and his life since Sappho’s flight. The old gentleman listened entranced. “It is indeed a fairy tale of love and chivalry such as we read of only in books,” he said at last with a long-drawn breath. Then he told them many interesting tales of slave life and its complications as he had known them. It was nearly midnight when Will left, promising to return the next day and complete arrangements for a wedding which was to take place immediately. Monsieur Louis insisted that he should furnish the wedding dress and breakfast, and be allowed to give the bride away. So a second Easter Day closed on happy love—a love sanctified and purified by suffering.
John Langley, soon after Dora’s marriage
