He drew back and looked at her. There was no dreary ghastliness in her pallor. He took her in his arms again for one long, lover kiss--one long kiss of life to life and soul to soul. In that kiss all their old hopes were fulfilled; all their old confidence came back again; all doubt and hesitation were gone forever. Fate, that was so cruel to them, forgave them again. The old terror between them had slowly sunk away, like a vanishing, ghostly dream,--vanishing as light of heaven grows strong and clear over the soul. The blood that they knew of on each other’s hands was washed and worn away, flowing no longer between, a dark line, narrow but deep as the river of death. They had riven their last embrace long ago, because a death, bloody and terrible, beheld them with dead, chilling eyes. Even that last embrace, with all its passionate despair, seemed a sacrilege, a repeated parricide. What if the murder was no murder? Then there was the dead. There, studying them with staring eyes, staring beyond them into an eternity of vengeance. Was that a place for love’s endearments? For tenderness dear and delicate? No! no! depart! Fly, lover! Seek thy saddest exile! Crush thy dear, dear longings! Forget! ah, yes, forget! That guiltless crime they knew of severed them. Go! Let this impossible love be crushed or forgotten. Crushed! Forgotten! These despot words are uttered easily; but all the while they know their futileness. Stronger grows mightiness until it has prevailed. And love is the strongest strength. This is the permanent and uncontrollable victor, stronger than death. But slowly for these lovers the sense of their guiltlessness overcame the awe of crime. Heaven pardons ah! things more guilty far, than their unhappy and bewildered innocence. They saw pardon rising over them, pale but hopeful as the twilight of dawn. And when this pardon overspread their hearts, like the throbbing violet of daybreak, and the pardoned lovers met, how could they know that parting had not done its common work? All common loves are slain by separation. So these two lovers stood apart; each ignorant whether Heaven had been generous to the other of its gift of pardon, and each unwilling, as proud souls may be, to hold the other to old pledges and perhaps detested bonds. Apart, but approaching surely; until the pleasant, meaning playfulness of picnic talk, and the fateful apparition of the flirt, and the chance confession of an old, half-forgotten folly, had revealed to them, clear as their hopes had been, the certainty of their love, unchanged, unchangeable, eternal, infinite. He had taken Diana in his arms again. Her hurt was surely not grave, a cut upon her arm as she fainted and fell. But again another spasm of paling agony passed over her face. “The old wound,” she said despairingly. “I am fainting again. Take me to Clara.” He lifted her--she, so dying as it seemed--he so strong in his heart’s agonies of death.