"What are you going to do about it, Lyn?" Kendall lighted a cigar and laughed.

"Oh, I managed to give a prairie-like suggestion of openness to her living-room plan and I told her to make John reach for a few things. It would do him good and save her soul alive."

"And she--what did she say to that?"

"Oh, she laughed. She has such a pretty laugh. Good-night, brother."

And then Lynda went upstairs to her quiet, dim room. It was a warmish night, with a moon that shone through the open s.p.a.ce in the rear. The lot had not been built upon and the white path that had seemed to lure old William Truedale away from life now stretched before Lynda Kendall, leading into life. Whatever doubts and fears she had known were put away. In her soft thin dress, standing by the open window, she was the gladdest creature one could wish to see. And so Truedale found her. He knew that only one reason had caused Lynda to meet him as she was now doing. It was--surrender! Across the moon-lighted room he went to her with opened arms, and when she came to meet him and lifted her face he kissed her reverently.

"I wonder if you have thought?" he whispered.

"I have done nothing else in the ages since I last saw you, Con."

"And you are not--afraid? You, who should have the best the world has to offer?"

"I am not afraid; and I--have the best--the very best."

Again Truedale kissed her.

"And when--may I come home--to stay?" he asked presently, knowing full well that the old home must be theirs.

Lynda looked up and smiled radiantly. "I had hoped," she said, "that I might have the honour of declining the little apartment. I'm so glad, Con, dear, that you want to come home to stay and will not have to be--forced here!" And at that moment Lynda had no thought of the money.

Bigger, deeper things held her.

"And--our wedding day, Lyn? Surely it may be soon."

"Let me see. Of course I'm a woman, Con, and therefore I must think of clothes. And I would like--oh! very much--to be married in a certain little church across the river. I found it once on a tramp. There are vines running wild over it--pink roses. And roses come in early June, Con."

"But, dearest, this is only--March."

"I must have--the roses, Con."

And so it was decided.

Late that night, in the stillness of the five little rooms of the big apartment, Truedale thought of his past and his future.

How splendid Lynda had been. Not a word of all that he had told her, and yet full well he realized how she had battled with it! She had accepted it and him! And for such love and faith his life would be only too short to prove his learning of his hard lesson. The man he now was sternly confronted the man he had once been, and then Truedale renounced the former forever--renounced him with pity, not with scorn. His only chance of being worthy of the love that had come into his life now, was to look upon the past as a stepping stone. Unless it could be that, it would be a bottomless pit.

CHAPTER XVI

The roses came early that June. Truedale and Lynda went often on their walks to the little church nestling deep among the trees in the Jersey town. They got acquainted with the old minister and finally they set their wedding day. They, with Brace, went over early on the morning.

Lynda was in her travelling gown for, after a luncheon, she and Truedale were going to the New Hampshire mountains. It was such a day as revived the reputation of June, and somehow the minister, steeped in the conventions of his office, could not let things rest entirely in the hands of the very eccentric young people who had won his consent to marry them. An organist, practising, stayed on, and always Lynda was to recall, when she thought of her wedding day, those tender notes that rose and fell like a stream upon which the sacred words of the simple service floated.

"The Voice That Breathed O'er Eden" was what the unseen musician played.

He seemed detached, impersonal, and only the repeated strains gave evidence of his sympathy. An old woman had wandered into the church and sat near the door with a rapt, wistful look on her wrinkled face. Near the altar was a little child, a tiny girl with a bunch of wayside flowers in her fat, moist hand.

Lynda paused and whispered something to the little maid and then, as she went forward, Truedale noticed that the child was beside Lynda, a shabby, wee maid of honour!

It was very quaint, very touchingly pretty, but the scene overawed the baby and when the last words were said and Truedale had kissed his wife they noticed that the little one was in tears. Lynda bent over her full of tenderness.

"What is it, dear?" she whispered.

"I--I want--my mother!"

"So do I, sweetheart; so do I!"

The wet eyes were raised in wonder.

"And where is your mother, baby?"

"Up--up--the hill!"

"Why, so is mine, but you will find yours--first. Don't cry, sweetheart.

See, here is a little ring. It is too large for you now, but let your mother keep it, and when you are big enough, wear it--and remember--me."

Dazzled by the gift, the child smiled up radiantly. "Good-bye," she whispered, "I'll tell mother--and I won't forget."

Later that same golden day, when Kendall bade his sister and Truedale good-bye at the station he had the look on his face that he used to have when, as a child, he was wont to wonder why he had to be brave because he was a boy.

It made Lynda laugh, even while a lump came in her throat. Then, as in the old days, she sought to recompense him, without relenting as to the code.

"Of course you'll miss us, dear old fellow, but we'll soon be back and"--she put her lips to his ear and whispered--"there's the little sister of the Morrells; play with her until we come home."

There are times in life that stand forth as if specially designed, and cause one to wonder, if after all, a personal G.o.d isn't directing affairs for the individual. They surely could not have just happened, those weeks in the mountains. So warm and still and cloudless they were for early June. And then there was a moon for a little while--a calm, wonderful moon that sent its fair light through the tall trees like a benediction. After that there were stars--millions of them--each in its place surrounded by that blue-blackness that is luminous and unearthly.

Securing a guide, Truedale and Lynda sought their own way and slept, at night, in wayside shelters by their own campfires. They had no definite destination; they simply wandered like pilgrims, taking the day's dole with joyous hearts and going to their sleep at night with healthy weariness.

Only once during those weeks did they speak of that past of Truedale's that Lynda had accepted in silence.

"My wife," Truedale said--she was sitting beside him by the outdoor fire--"I want you always to remember that I am more grateful than words can express for your--bigness, your wonderful understanding. I did not expect that even you, Lyn, could be--so!"

She trembled a little--he remembered that afterward--he felt her against his shoulder.

"I think--I know," she whispered, "that women consider the _effect_ of such--things, Con. Had the experience been low, it would have left its mark; as it is I am sure--well, it has not darkened your vision."

"No, Lyn, no!"

"And lately, I have been thinking of her, Con--that little Nella-Rose."

"You--have? You _could_, Lyn?"

"Yes. At first I couldn't possibly comprehend--I do not now, really, but I find myself believing, in spite of my inability to understand, that the experience has cast such a light upon her way, poor child, that--off in some rude mountain home--she has a little fairer s.p.a.ce than some.

Con, knowing you, I believe you could not have--lowered her. She went back to her natural love--it must have been a strong call--but I shall never believe her depraved."

"Lyn," Truedale's voice was husky, "once you made me reconciled to my uncle's death--it was the way you put it--and now you have made me dare to be--happy."