Shirley’s breath stopped. She felt her face tinging and a curious weakness came on her limbs. Why indeed, unless—and the thought was like a wild prayer in her mind—she had been mistaken in her surmise? Thoughts came thronging in panic haste: the fourteenth of May and the cape jessamines—these might point no less to Valiant than to Sassoon. But her mother’s fainting at the sight of the son—the eager interest she had displayed in Shirley’s accounts of him, from the episode of the [Pg 421]rose and the bulldog to the tournament ball—seemed now to stand out in a new light, throbbing and roseate. Could it be? Had she been stumbling along a blind trail, misled by the cunning dovetailing of circumstance? Her heart was beating stiflingly. If she should be mistaken now! She dashed her hand across her eyes as though to compel their clearness, and looked again. It was Beauty Valiant’s face that lay in the locket, and that could mean but one thing: it was he, not Sassoon, whom her mother loved! The lamplight seemed to grow and spread to an unbearable radiance. Shirley thought she cried out with a sudden sweet wildness, but she had not moved or uttered a sound. The illumination was all about her, like a splendid cloud. The impossible had happened. The miracle for which she had hysterically prayed had been wrought! When she blew out the light, the shining still remained. That glowing knowledge, like a vitalizing and physical presence, passed with her through the hall to her own room. As she stood in the elfish light of her one candle, the poignancy of her joy was as sharp as her past pain. Later was to come the wonder how that tragedy had bent Beauty Valiant’s life to exile and her mother’s to unfulfilment, and in time she was to know these things, too. But now the one great knowledge blotted out all else. She need starve her fancy no longer! The [Pg 422]hours with her lover might again sweep across her memory undenied. She felt his arms, his kisses, heard his whispers against her cheek and smelled the perfume of Madonna lilies. She drew the curtain and opened the window noiselessly to the night. Only a few hours ago she had been singing to her harp in what wretchedness! She laughed softly to herself. The quiet night was full of his voice: “I love you! I want nothing but you!” How her pitiful error had tortured and wrung them both! But to-morrow he, too, would know that all was well.