At first he did not understand, but gradually as he listened, helpless in his grief, her words opened out before him like a pathway that led somewhere into peace. He looked down at her, his eyes flaming as if all his life had centralized and focused within them. Then he bent and laid his forehead on her arm. What with weak souls requires time, even long years, powerful natures achieve at once. In the silence Emil's oath was fulfilled. Summoning Annie, Rachel kissed her; and the other, with timid impulsiveness, slipped a little hand in that of her husband. So they left Rachel. But at the door they turned. She was still gazing after them with a mute, almost mystic concentration. Meeting their look, however, she suddenly smiled and in her eyes was the splendour of some newly-discovered truth. Something she had long wished for had been gained. She felt a sense of supreme restfulness and this sense deepened and increased even as she lent an ear to the sound of the wheels on the gravel, those wheels that were carrying from her, through the stillness of the morning world, the two who had loved her wildly and whom she had loved. When Simon returned, he found her leaning on her elbow. The nurse had carried out the night-lamp and the chamber was filled with a wan half-light. "The box, Simon, will you hand it to me?" He did not know at first to what she referred; his brow flew up in wrinkles: then he brought the little Swiss clock from its place on her dressing-table. "Now wind it," she said. He wound the pretty plaything, and placed it on her raised knees. Lying back on her pillows, her hands folded across her breast, Rachel listened to the tiny bird, and as she listened, a little, tender, understanding smile touched her lips. When the golden shell had closed over the performer she looked up at her husband: "Its song is the song of freedom, isn't it?" But for Simon these words had no meaning. He had not slept for several nights, and as he replaced the box in its former position, he stumbled. He took a chair beside the bed and his head sank. Lower and lower it sank until it rested on the pillow beside hers. She laid her hand on it. And ever the day waxed stronger. Now as the mist began to lift, the wild birds awoke in the garden. Here and there from a tree sounded a tentative chirp. The air moved in currents of keener freshness. Everything breathed of the dawn. Rachel turned her eyes to the sea and on her face was the light of her inner vision. Thus Love solves all the problems that torture the soul of man; through beauty and through silence, it speaks to the heart of a Freedom beyond all its earthly dreams. THE END End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Bird in the Box, by Mary Mears