Page:Frank Packard - Greater Love Hath No Man.djvu/225

 when in panic she had tried to drive it, and the thoughts it conjured up, from her. The flush upon her cheek grew deeper—why was it that these thoughts, though they had come again unbidden, did not terrify her now? Was it because Varge was gone, because their lives were as utterly apart now as though one or both were dead, because she would never see him again; or was it that these last few days in which so much had happened, in which even her life was owed to his courage, his bravery, his strength, had wrought a change in her that was to be for all the years to come—a change that brought this strange new gladness, and this pain that was full of yearning, full of sadness? Was it—that? Had she come—to care?

She lifted her head from her hands, the red sweeping in waves over her neck and cheeks, a wild beating of her heart that would not still—the room seemed to swim before her eyes. For a long time she sat there rigidly; then her chin fell slowly to her hands again.

It was very late that night when the light in Mrs. Woods' little parlour went out.