Perhaps it was the silence that made her turn; perhaps she simply turned with no thought or reason at all, but she faced slowly about at that moment, just in time to see John Anderson nod and smile happily at something he alone could see--just in time to hear him sigh softly once, before his arms went slack upon his work-bench and his head drooped forward above them. The bit of a card fluttered to the floor as both her tight-clenched fists lifted toward her throat. The softest of pitying little moans came quavering from her lips. She needed no explanation of what that suddenly limp body meant! And she understood better now, too, that untouched lump of clay upon the boards beside his bowed head. John Anderson's long task was finished. He had known it was finished, and had been merely resting tonight--resting content before he started upon that long journey, before he followed that face, tumbled of hair and uplifted of lip, which seemed always to be calling to him. The slim-bodied girl whose face was so like what that other woman's face had been went slowly across to him where he sat. After a while she slipped her arm about his wasted shoulders, just as she had done so often on other nights. A racking sob shook her when she first tried to speak--and she tried again. "You kept faith, didn't you, dear?" she whispered to him. "Oh, but you kept faith with her--right--right up to the end. Please God--please God, I may get my chance back again--to try to keep it, too. You've gone to her--and--and I'm glad! You waited a long time, dear, and you were very patient. But, oh, you've left me--you've left me all alone!" The tears came then. Great, searing drops that had been hopelessly dammed back the night before rolled down her thin cheeks. She stooped and touched the silvered head with her lips before she groped her way into the other room and found her chair at the table. "He knew I was there with him," she tried to whisper. "He knew I was, I know! But I wish I could tell him I'm sorry. Oh, I wish I could!" And Old Jerry found her so, head pillowed upon her outstretched arms, her hair in a marvelous shimmering mass across her little shoulders when he came the next morning, almost before the day was fairly begun, to tell her all the things there were for him to tell. CHAPTER XII