Page:Terminations (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1895).djvu/232

220 "Women are wonderful," said Stransom. "But I assure you I've forgiven him too."

"If I had known of any thing so strange I wouldn't have brought you here."

"So that we might have gone on in our ignorance to the last?"

"What do you call the last?" she asked, smiling still.

At this he could smile back at her. "You'll see—when it comes."

She reflected a moment. "This is better perhaps; but as we were—it was good."

"Did it never happen that he spoke of me?" Stransom enquired.

Considering more intently, she made no answer, and he quickly recognized that he would have been adequately answered by her asking how often he himself had spoken of their terrible friend. Suddenly a brighter light broke in her face, and an excited idea sprang to her lips in the question: "You have forgiven him?"

"How, if I hadn't, could I linger here?"

She winced, for an instant, at the deep but unintended irony of this; but even while she did so she panted quickly: "Then in the lights on your altar?"

"There's never a light for Acton Hague!"

She stared, with a great visible fall. "But if he's one of your Dead?"

"He's one of the world's, if you like—he's one of yours. But he's not one of mine. Mine are