Page:Frank Packard - Greater Love Hath No Man.djvu/279

, hope came again. It was very early yet—he had only to wait. Perhaps she was down in the village at some house and the warden had gone to join her there and, later, to bring her home. Wait! If that were all—just to wait for a little while longer! But he could not wait there behind the elm—it was too close to the driveway, she would pass it when she came back and he would be seen—at the other end of the veranda, behind the willow, he could see equally well and without risk of his presence becoming known.

He stepped quietly out from the shadow of the elm onto the moonlit lawn; he would go there at once while the opportunity was his, and before—

"Varge!"

It came in a cry—not a startled cry; but soft, broken, like a sudden sob, full of wonder, full of pathos, a naked cry robed in no studied dress, the cry of a soul, that halted him, chained him to the spot and robbed him of his strength.

"Varge!" Something white showed behind the dark network of the Virginia creeper that trailed over the end of the veranda, a chair scraped and toppled over—and she was coming toward him down the veranda steps.

What had he done! In that moment all the joy of Heaven above, the tortures and the sorrows of the lost seemed his. He had never dreamed of this—that she should know — that she should see him. There could be but one reason, only one, for his presence there; and she, so sensitive, so sure in intuition—it could not pass her by. And he, who months ago had fought his way to freedom from this very place that she might not have