She was choked by a sharp rush of joy at Dodge's accomplishment, an entire understanding of the beauty he had vainly explained, the deathless communication of old splendid courage, an unshaken divine need, to succeeding men and hope. This had been hers. She had always felt her presence in his success; but, until now, it had belonged exclusively to him. Dodge had, in his love, absorbed her, and that resulted in the statues the world applauded. She, Linda thought, had been an element easily dismissed. It had hurt her pride almost beyond endurance, the pride that took the form of an inner necessity for the survival of her grace--all she had. She had even asked him, in a passing resentment, why he had never directly modeled her, kept, with his recording genius, the shape of her features. She had gone to him in a blinder vanity for the purpose of stamping her participation in his triumph on the stupid insensibility of their world. How incredible! But at last she could see that he had preserved her spirit, her secret self, from destruction. He had cheated death of her fineness. The delicate perfection of her youth would never perish, never be dulled by old age or corrupted in death. It had inspired and entered into Pleydon's being, and he had lifted it on the pedestal rising between the sea and sky. She was in the Luxembourg, in that statue of Cotton Mather, the somber flame, about which he had written with a comment on the changing subjects of his creations. From the moment when he sat beside her on the divan in that room stifling with incense, with the naked glimmer of women's shoulders, she had been the source of his power. She had been his power. Linda smiled quietly, in retrospect, at her years of uncertainty, the feeling of waste, that had robbed her of peace. How complete her mystification had been! And, all the while, she had had the thrill of delight, of premonition, born in her through the forgotten hour with the man who had died. The sun, moving in celestial space, shifted the shadow about the base of Simon Downige's monument. The afternoon was advancing. She rose and turned, looking out over the sea to the horizon as brightly sharp as a curved sword. The life of Cottarsport, below her, proceeded in detached figures, an occasional unhurried passage. The boats in the harbor were slumberous. It was time to go. She gazed again, for a last view, at the bronze seated figure; and a word of Pleydon's, but rather it was Greek, wove its significance in the placid texture of her thoughts. Its exact shape evaded her, a difficult word to recall--_Katharsis_, the purging of the heart. About her was the beating of the white wings of a Victory sweeping her--a faded slender woman in immaculate gloves and a small matchless hat--into a region without despair. THE END End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Linda Condon, by Joseph Hergesheimer