In the little haircloth trunk back in her room lay an old scrap-book. It held a few leaves torn from letters and many newspaper clippings. From these she had known of his work, his marriage, the great commercial success for which his name had stood—the name that from the day of his going, she had so seldom taken upon her lips. Some of them had dealt with his habits and idiosyncrasies, hints of an altered personality, an aloofness or loneliness that had set him apart and made him, in a way, a stranger to those who should have known him best. Thus her mind had come to hold a double image: the grave man these shadowed forth, and the man she had loved, whose youthful face was in the locket she wore always on her breast. It was this face that was printed on her heart, and when John Valiant had stood before her on the porch at Rosewood, it had seemed to have risen, instinct, from that old grave. He had not kept silence! He had written! It pealed through her brain like a muffled bell. But Beauty Valiant was gone with her youth; in the room near by lay that old companion who would never speak to her again, the lifelong friend—who [Pg 396]had really failed her thirty years ago!... and in a tin box a mile away lay a letter.... “He won’t rouse again,” the doctor had said, but a little later, as he and Valiant sat beside the couch, the major opened his eyes suddenly. “Shirley,” he whispered. “Where’s Shirley?” She was sitting on the porch just outside the open window, and when she entered, tears were on her face. The doctor drew back silently; but when Valiant would have done so, the major called him nearer. “No,” he panted; “I like to see you two together.” His voice was very weak and tired. As she leaned and touched his hand, he smiled whimsically. “It’s mighty curious,” he said, “but I can’t get it out of my head that it’s Beauty Valiant and Judith that I’m really talking to. Foolish—isn’t it?” But the idea seemed to master him, and presently he began to call Shirley by her mother’s name. An odd youthfulness crept into his eyes; a subtle paradoxical boyishness. His cheek tinged with color. The deep lines about his mouth smoothed miraculously out. “Judith,” he whispered, “—you—sure you told me the truth a while ago, when you said—you said—” “Yes, yes,” Shirley answered, putting her young arm under him, thinking only to soothe the anxiety [Pg 397]that seemed vaguely to thread some vague hallucination. He smiled again. “It makes it easier,” he said. He looked at Valiant, his mind seeming to slip farther and farther away. “Beauty,” he gasped, “you didn’t go away after all, did you! I dreamed it—I reckon. It’ll be—all right with you both.” He sighed peacefully, and his eyes turned to Shirley’s and closed. “I’m—so glad,” he muttered, “so glad I—didn’t really do it, Judith. It would have—been the—only—low-down thing—I—ever did.”