Leaning through the parted curtain of the hanging vines, one hand at
her throat, the other holding three candles, and her dark eyes wide
above her thinned brown cheeks, she stood herself. At her knee there
hung the heavy head of the great dog, Loup.
She, as she had been when first he looked upon her, yet intangibly
changed, the same yet not the same.
They stood in silence and looked into each other's eyes as if void of
speech, of motion, held by the mighty yearning that must look and look
with insatiable intensity, the half unreal reality of the moment.
And then the stopped breath in the girl's throat caught itself with a
little sound that broke the spell.
The man sprang forward and took her in his arms, not passionately,
strongly, as he had done once before, but with a love so high, so
chastened, so humble that it gentled his touch to reverence.
"I have come, Maren," he said brokenly; "I have followed you to the
land you sought. Maid of my heart! My soul!"
Without words, without question, she yielded herself to his embrace,
lifted her face to him and gave into his keeping that which was his
from the beginning.
"Mother Mary! I thank Thee!" he heard her whisper, and when he loosed
her to look once more into her level eyes, they were dim with tears.
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