Thus they stood for awhile, their eyes fixed on each other: then a heavy sigh broke from him; he turned to his child. “Nelly, my little one, come to me! I am thy father!” He extended his arms. The action and words broke the spell. With an indescribable cry Dolly fled to him. “John! John!” she murmured. “My husband--my very own! Come back to me from the dead! Come back to me after all this cruel waiting!” And then she broke from him again, and watched him yet again from a distance, then ran and flung her arms around his neck, crying, “John! John! Why did you not come to me before? why did you not come to me before?” The hot tears were streaming down his cheeks now: he held her tightly, saying, in broken tones: “We are together--never more to part. I am thy very husband! I have loved thee always! Oh, God be praised, the merciful God be praised for this!” “Nelly, Nelly!” she cried; and she ran from him and seized her child, and held her up. “She is ours, John! our little one! We have found papa, Nelly! There he is! There is Nelly’s papa! God has given him back to us--we were broken-hearted just now ... O husband! ... husband!” She broke down; a dangerous excitement had up to this moment sustained her. She sank into a weeping, sobbing, fainting woman in a moment; but his arms received her, his breast pillowed her, and there she rested for many minutes, with no sound to break the holy silence that filled the room but his deep quivering sobs. * * * * * When we peep at them again, a half-hour has passed, and the wife is seated near the husband with her arm around him; and the child is on her father’s knee. The fear that threw a film upon the exquisite emotions of the girl has passed; she is listening to his story, interrupting him often with quick exclamations of distress, then fondling him and listening again, vibrating with eagerness, with love, with amazement, which makes her pale face kaleidoscopic with expression. He is telling her of his sufferings in the boat, of his rescue, of his friends in Australia, of his return to England, of his arrival at Southbourne; and as she hears him tell the story of his noble unselfishness--how, to save her from the sorrow and the shame that must have attended his disclosure, if made while Conway lived, he held his secret, but could not keep his love from going forth to his child--she knows that he has brought back to her the same grand heart he took with him five years ago; the same magnanimous qualities; the same pure impulses; the same heroical capacity of self-sacrifice. And then she tells him her story; and now it is for him to soothe her with the love that has transformed his face and made it beautiful with a deeper and subtler beauty than it had ever before worn. For, as she recurs to those piteous times of her distress, her tears gush forth afresh and her eyes grow wild, as though she did not believe in the happiness that had come to her at last.