“Yes, alone,” he said.
“Did not One greater than I go out alone some nineteen centuries ago?”
“Alone?
Alone?”
A sob rose in her throat and choked her.
“But before I go,” he said, after a moment, in a voice which he strove in vain to render steady,
“I want to tell you —” He paused for a moment, struggling for mastery of his feelings.
“Yes?” she whispered.
“— That I shall never forget you, little girl, as long as I live.
Never.”
He turned abruptly to depart. “No, not alone! You shall not go alone!” she stopped him with a sudden cry.
He whirled as if he had been shot.
“What do you mean?
What do you mean?” he cried hoarsely.
“Oh, can’t you see!
Can’t you see!”
She threw out her little hands imploringly, and her voice broke.
“Grace!
Grace!
Dear heaven, do you mean it!”
“You silly man!
Oh, you dear blind foolish boy!
Haven’t you known for ages — since the day I first heard you preach at the Murphy Street settlement?”
He crushed her to him in a fierce embrace; her slender body yielded to his touch as he bent over her; and her round arms stole softly across his broad shoulders, around his neck, drawing his dark head to her as he planted hungry kisses on her closed eyes, the column of her throat, the parted petal of her fresh young lips.
“Forever,” he answered solemnly.
“So help me God.”
The organ music swelled now into a triumphant p?an, filling with its exultant melody that vast darkness of the church.
And as Old Michael cast his heart into the music, the tears flowed unrestrained across his withered cheeks, but smilingly happily through his tears, as dimly through his old eyes he saw the two young figures enacting again the age-old tale of youth and love, he murmured,
“I am the resurrection and the life, Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end” . . .
Eugene turned his wet eyes to the light that streamed through the library windows, winked rapidly, gulped, and blew his nose heavily.
Ah, yes!
Ah, yes!
. . . The band of natives, seeing now that they had no more to fear, and wild with rage at the losses they had suffered, began to advance slowly toward the foot of the cliff, led by Taomi, who, dancing with fury, and hideous with warpaint, urged them on, exhorting them in a shrill voice.
Glendenning cursed softly under his breath as he looked once more at the empty cartridge belts, then grimly, as he gazed at the yelling horde below, slipped his two remaining cartridges into his Colt.
“For us?” she said, quietly.
He nodded.
“It is the end?” she whispered, but without a trace of fear.
Again he nodded, and turned his head away for a moment.
Presently he lifted his gray face to her.
“It is death, Veronica,” he said, “and now I may speak.”
“Yes, Bruce,” she answered softly.
It was the first time he had ever heard her use his name, and his heart thrilled to it.
“I love you, Veronica,” he said.
“I have loved you ever since I found your almost lifeless body on the beach, during all the nights I lay outside your tent, listening to your quiet breathing within, love you most of all now in this hour of death when the obligation to keep silence no longer rests upon me.”
“Dearest, dearest,” she whispered, and he saw her face was wet with tears.
“Why didn’t you speak?
I have loved you from the first.”
She leaned toward him, her lips half-parted and tremulous, her breathing short and uncertain, and as his bare arms circled her fiercely their lips met in one long moment of rapture, one final moment of life and ecstasy, in which all the pent longing of their lives found release and consummation now at this triumphant moment of their death.
A distant reverberation shook the air.
Glendenning looked up quickly, and rubbed his eyes with astonishment.