With these words in his ears he was gone. As he passed out of the gate and out of her life he saw, or fancied he saw, through the veiled window, a white figure beckoning to him, but his steps were sternly set toward the opposite direction--his whole being crying within him, "Nevermore--nevermore!" She had stretched out her spiritlike hands, but to draw them back again, in the fashion that fascinated and at the same time maddened him, once too often. The wave of romantic feeling which had borne him along since his vision of her in the garden suddenly subsided, leaving him disillusioned--cold. The reaction was so violent that instead of the magnetic attraction she had had for him he felt himself positively repelled by the thought of her unearthly beauty--her mysterious eyes. He went straight to the depot and took the train just leaving, which would bear him back to the cottage among the cherry trees. Mother Clemm, expecting him to bring home a bride, had spent the day putting an extra touch of brightness upon the simple but already spotless, home. A cheerful fire was in the grate; branches of holly, cedar and such other such bits of beauty as the woods afforded were everywhere about the house, and the Mother herself, in the snowiest of caps with the sheerest of floating strings and a gallant look of welcome upon her sorrowful face, stood at the window and watched for the coming of the son that Heaven had given her, and the woman who was to take the place of the daughter that Heaven had taken away from her. Her oak-like nature had quailed at the thought--but it had withstood many a blast, it could weather one more, and after all, if "Eddie" were happy--. * * * * * In the far distance a figure emerged out of the gathering dusk--a man. Could it be Eddie?--Alone? Yes! It surely was he! The carriage of the head--the military cloak--the walk--were unmistakable. But he was alone!--She grew weak in the knees.--The shock of joy more nearly unnerved her than had the pain. She had braced herself to bear the pain. She recovered her composure and hastened to the door just in time to be folded into the arms of the figure in the cloak. "Helen?"--she queried. "Is dead--to me," he answered, with his arms still about her. "We will have nothing more to say of her except this: Muddie, I have been in a dream from which, thank God, I am now awake. In the darkness of my loneliness--of my misery, of which you alone have the slightest conception, I saw a light which I fancied would lead me to the love for which my soul is starving--to the sympathy which is sweeter even than love to the broken heart of a man. I followed it. I was deceived. It was no real light, but a mere will o' the wisp bred in the dank tarn of despair." He released her to hang up the cloak in the little entrance hall, then taking her hand, which he raised to his lips, drew her into the sitting room. "Ah, but it is good to be at home again!" he exclaimed.