"You didn't think," he said in a low voice, "that I stayed away because I--because that same thing had ever happened since the day of the trial?" "No," she answered, gently, "I knew it hadn't." A uniformed imp on a bicycle--a postal messenger--careened wildly up the drive with a special delivery letter. They saw him deliver it to old Nelson at the side portico and pedal whistling down a by-path. "Then," he said quickly, "you know now that it never can again? It has been a year, a round year to-day. I made up my mind that I would not come to you till the last day was out." "I felt that, too," she said. "I knew what you were thinking. I--I even guessed the year. Was it--so hard?" "Yes," he answered. "But it would have been harder if I hadn't found it out when I did. The sting of all these months," he went on, "has been your thought of me! Every day, every hour, I have seen you as you looked that night at the 'Farm.' I shall never deserve that look again--Echo!" She turned toward him at that, as if with a sudden impulse, her eyes like sapphire stars, her lips parted, but she did not speak. The failing sunlight spattered down through the moving foliage in green-gilt flashes that tinged her face and touched her hair with the soft burnish of Venetian gold, like that of a figure he remembered in St. Mark's. Behind her reared the seamed and grey old column--a faded background of age for a figure of immortal youth--and he knew suddenly that the picture of her, as he saw her at that moment, had covered forever the painful memory. There was only the ardent, unconditional now: only Echo and the dear old porch and the dimming daylight--and a bluebird singing from the heart of a tree--ever henceforward to be symbols to him of woman's love and--home! He leaned toward her, his hand groping for hers, outstretched on the cool stone beside her, and said in a voice shaken, in spite of himself: "Echo--it _is_ just as it was a year ago, isn't it?" She caught her hand--the one he groped for--to her cheek. She rose, and for an instant it seemed as if she had not heard. Then her glance wavered and fell and a bright, rich colour stained her cheeks like a sudden flush of rosy sun-set. But she had slightly turned away and he did not see it. "Ah!" he said, looking up at her. "I may say it now--may I not?--what you must have known all along. I love you, I love you! Only you and your love, dear--that is all I ask of God!... Echo--" There was a sudden sound behind them, a hoarse cry from the room they had left. Both turned sharply toward the French-window. Then she was down the long porch like a flying shadow. He followed, to find her bending over the form of her father, slipped sideways on the leathern sofa, his face bluish-white and a paper crumpled in his rigid hand. At the same moment Nelson thrust his woolly head through the rear door.