"Her whole heart was in her boy. She often feared that she loved him too much--more than God himself--yet she could not bear to pray to have her love for her child lessened." Still no better! What _is_ it all about? I begin over again. "Her whole heart was in her boy," etc. I go through this process ten times. I should go through it twenty, or even thirty, for I am resolved to go on reading, but at the end of the tenth, my ear--unconsciously strained--catches the sound of a step at the stair-foot. It is not the footman's. It is firmer, heavier, and yet quicker. Eight weary months is it since I last heard that footfall. My heart pulses with mad haste, my cheeks throb, but I sit still, and hold the book before my eyes. I will _not_ go to meet him. I will be as indifferent as he! When he opens the door, I will not even look round, I will be too much immersed in the page before me. "Her whole heart was in her boy. She often feared that--" The door-handle is turning. I _cannot_ help it! Against my will, my head turns too. With no volition of my own--against my firmest intention--my feet carry me hastily toward him. My arms stretch themselves out. Thank God! thank God! whatever happens afterward, I shall still thank God, and call him good for allowing it. I am in Roger's embrace. No more mistakes! no more delays! he is here, and I am kissing him as I never kissed any one--as I certainly never kissed _him_ in my life before. Well, I suppose that in every life there are _some_ moments that are _absolutely_ good--that one could not mend even if one were given the power to try! I suppose that even those who, looking back over their history, say, most distinctly and certainly, "It was a failure," can yet lay the finger of memory on _some_ such gold minutes--it may be only half a dozen, only four, only _two_--but still on some. This is one of my gold moments, one of those misplaced ones that have strayed out of heaven, where, perhaps, they are _all_ such--_perhaps_--one can't be _sure_, for what human imagination can grasp the idea of even a _day_, wholly made of such minutes? I have forgotten Mrs. Huntley--Mr. Musgrave. Every ill suspicion, every stinging remembrance, is dead or fallen into a trance. All bad thoughts have melted away from the earth. Only joyful love and absolute faith remain, only the knowledge that Roger is mine, and I am his, and that we are in each other's arms. I do not know how long we remain without speaking. I do not imagine that souls in bliss ever think of looking at the clock. He is the first to break silence. For the first time for eight months I hear his voice again--the voice that for so many weeks seemed to me no better than any other voice--whose tones I _now_ feel I could pick out from those of any other living thing, did all creation shout together.