He rose manfully, as soon as he could. She stood in the firelight, looking up. A quiver passed over her delicate chin. He held out his hand. She put her strong, warm clasp within it. “I told you that I trusted you,” she said distinctly. “Believe me, and go in peace.” “I don’t know another woman in the world who would!” cried Bayard. “Then let me be that only one,” she answered. “I am proud to be.” He could not reply. They stood with clasped hands. Their eyes did not embrace, but comradeship entered them. “You will let me write?” he pleaded, at last. “Yes.” “And see you--sometimes.” “Yes.” “And trust me--in spite of all?” “I have said it.” “My blessing isn’t worth much,” he said brokenly, “but for what it is--Oh, my Love, God go with you!” “And stay with you!” she whispered. He laid her hand gently down, and turned away. She heard him shut the door, and walk feebly, coughing, up the avenue. He looked back, once. He saw her standing between the lace curtains with her arms upraised, and her hand above her eyes, steadily looking out into the dark. XX. So Emanuel Bayard entered into his Wilderness. Therein he was tempted like other men of God who renounce the greatest joy of life for its grandest duty. There he thirsted and hungered, and put forth no hand towards the meat or drink of human comfort; there he contended with himself, and hid his face, for he went into solitary places, and prayed apart, asking for that second strength which sustains a man in the keeping of the vow that he has not feared to take upon his soul--not knowing, till God teaches him, how easy it is to recognize, and how hard to hold, “the highest when we see it.” * * * * * Winter drew its yoke of ice about the shrinking shoulders of the Cape; the fleets huddled in the harbor; the fishermen drowned on the Grand Banks; Windover shivered and shriveled, and looked with wincing, winking eyes upon the blinding horizon of the winter sea; the breakers broke in white fire upon the bar; Angel Alley drank and cursed to keep warm; and the young preacher’s delicate face, patiently passing in and out beneath the white and scarlet lights of the chapel of Christlove, gathered a snowdrift of its own with the whitening of the year. His work, like most service sustained in consecration and in common sense by one pure and strong personality, grew upon his hands; not steadily, but by means of much apparent failure. The fame of the heretic missionary had gone abroad as such things do. It was no uncommon thing for members of the strictest sect of the Orthodox churches to stand half curious, half deferent, and wholly perplexed by what they saw and heard, and calculating the prospects of an experiment which the observer was, as a rule, too wise a man or too good a woman not to respect.