... It was dark upon the threshold. She took his hand. He heard her heart beating, or was it his own?... They heard the little breathing. She guided his hand to the warm little hand. “Yes, he is well,” she whispered. “Everything is perfect with your coming.... There.... You hurried home to me, didn’t you?... Yes, I hoped. I felt the ship. I could not sleep. I wondered if I could be wrong.... Oh, to think of the dawn coming in--finding us here together ... and the little Gleam....” * * * * * Gray light was coming in. Her face was shadowed, but the gray was faint about her hair. His heart had taken something perfect from her; something of the nature of that peace which had come to him at the _Jade’s_ rail crossing the Line, but greater than that, the fulfilment of that. Because it was perfect, it could not last in its fulness. That was the coolness of the Hills, but his love was glowing now like noon sunlight in a valley, the redolence of high sunlight in the river lowlands. Mother Earth had taken them again. It was the tide of life; it was as she had told him it must be with her, akin to the loveliest processes of nature, like the gilding of a tea-rose, like the flight of swans. He watched her as the dawn rose, as a woman is only to be seen in her own room; watched her without words, until from the concentration, that which had been bound floated free within him.... A sentence she had spoken (it may have been an hour, or a moment ago) returned to his consciousness. “Oh, how I wanted you to come home to-night!” His mind was full of pictures and power. It may have been the strangeness of the light, but his eyes could not hold her face, nor his mind remember the face that had welcomed him in the lamplight. Different faces moved before his eyes, a deep likeness in the plan of them, as pearls would be sorted and matched for one string, a wonderful sisterhood of faces, tenderness, fortitude, ardour, joy, renunciation. It was like a stroke. He had loved them all--facets of one jewel. And was the jewel her soul? He arose, without turning from her, and moved to the far corner of the room, where there was neither chair nor table. As he moved, he watched her with tireless thirsting eyes. She arose and came to him, moving low.... This figure that came, thrilled him again with the old magic of the river-banks. He could not pass the wonder of her crossing the room to follow him.... And now he saw her lips in the light--a girl’s shyness about her lips. She was a girl that instant--as if a veil had dropped behind her. It had never been so before--a woman always, wise and finished with years, compared to whom that other was a child. And yet she was little older than that other--in years. He loved the shyness of her lips. It was like one familiar bloom in the midst of exotic wonders. It seemed he would fall--before she touched him.