With the revolver still in his hand, he sank into a chair near a window and gazed out into the star-filled sky. Suddenly he started. Whence had come the thought? He could not tell, but a new and dazzling conviction was on him like light streaming through the gates of Paradise. Kill himself? How absurd the thought! He might dash his bleeding, lifeless body to the earth, but he, himself, would remain a deathless witness to the act. Nothing in the shape of matter, no force known to science, could possibly put out of existence the yearning for atonement within him. Nothing so divine as that could die. Such a thing was from the Eternity that had created Eternity. He threw the revolver on his bed, and drew a deep, delectable breath. His now entranced vision seemed to extend further out into the world-filled void above him. He stood up, panting from the sheer ravage his new hope had wrought upon him. “Eternity! Eternity!” he whispered, in reverential awe. “Now I see--the scales have fallen from my sight. I see! Thank God, I see! I understand!” CHAPTER XXIII |WHEN Kenneth Galt waked the next morning it was with the new sense of having slept long and restfully for the first time in years. The sun was streaming into his windows from the golden east; the cool air seemed crisp and invigorating; in the boughs of the trees close by birds were flitting about and singing merrily. The dew-wet sward, bespangled with a myriad of sun-born gems, stretched away into the gauzy mist which hung over the town. “It is glorious--glorious!” he cried, in ecstasy. “She may refuse, but I shall never desist till I have won her forgiveness.” After he had breakfasted in the big dining-room, now no longer solitary, sombre, or accusing, he went directly down to Mrs. Barry's cottage. With a strange, buoyant lightness of step he entered the little gate, fastened the latch with a calm hand, and went up the steps and rapped on the closed door, seeing, as he stood waiting, the face of Mrs. Chumley, as the washerwoman peered curiously over the fence at him from her wood-pile, where she was wielding a gapped and dull-edged axe. The door was opened by Mrs. Barry, who could not disguise her surprise. “I have come to see your daughter, Mrs. Barry,” he said, humbly, as he stood uncovered before her. “I hope she will receive me; I have something important to say.” “She's not here. But don't stand there,” the old woman said; “somebody might see you and wonder. Come into the parlor.” She led the way, and he followed. “No, she is not here,” she repeated, when they were in the simply furnished room. “She and Lionel went very early to the swamp over the hill near the river. She had some sketching to do, and he wished to go along. You say you want to see her. Of course, you understand that such a request is unexpected, to say the least, and, as I am her mother--” The speaker seemed at a loss for words to express her meaning, and paused helplessly.