He stood just within the library door and listened again. A profound
stillness seemed to beat through the deserted rooms--then he saw her! She
sat with her arms outspread across the table and her head bent upon a
pile of papers. She was tensely still as if waiting for something to
sound around her.
"Caroline!" It was the first time he had called her by her name and
though the others had done it from the first, she had never seemed to
notice his more formal address. It was beyond him to keep the tenderness
that swept through every nerve out of his voice entirely.
"Yes," she answered as she raised her head and looked at him, her eyes
shining dark in her white face, "I know I'm a coward--did you come back
to make me go? I thought they might not miss me until it was too late to
come for me. I didn't think--I--could stand it--please--please!"
"You needn't go at all, dear," he said as he took the cold hands in his
and unclasped the wrung fingers. "Why didn't you tell them? They wouldn't
have insisted on your going."
"I--I couldn't! I just could not say what I felt to--to--_them_. I wanted
to come--the statue suggested itself--for her. I ought to have given it
and gone back--back to my own life. I don't belong--there is something
between them all and me. They love me and try to make me forget it and--"
"But, don't you see, child, that's just it? They love you so they hold
you against all the other life you have had before. We're a strong love
people down here--we claim our own!" A note in his voice brought Andrew
to his senses. He let her hands slip from his and went around the
table and sat down opposite to her. "And so you ran away and hid?" He
smiled at her reassuringly.
"Yes. I knew I ought not to--then I heard the music and I couldn't look
or listen. I--why, where did you come from? I thought you were in the
parade with David. I felt--if you knew you would understand. I wished
that I had asked you--had told you that I couldn't go. Did you come back
for me?"
"No," answered Andrew with a prayer in his heart for words to cover facts
from the clear eyes fixed on his--clear, comforted young eyes that looked
right down to the rock bed of his soul. "You see the old boys rather
upset me, too. I have been away so long--and so many of them are missing.
I'm just a coward, too--'birds of a feather'--take me under your wing,
will you?"
"I believe one of those 'strange wild things' has been flying around in
the atmosphere and has taken possession of us again," said Caroline
Darrah slowly, never taking her eyes from his. "I don't know why I know,
but I do, that you came to comfort me. I was thinking about you and
wishing I could tell you. Now in just this minute you've made me see that
I have a right to all of you. I'm never going to be unhappy about it any
more. After this I'm going to belong as hard as ever I can."