"And you are satisfied?" he said, in a low voice.
Her eyes shone with a soft brightness that seemed to illumine her whole face. "Satisfied that my beloved is waiting for me and that I shall meet him in the dawning?" she said. "Oh yes, I have known that in my heart for a long time. It troubled me terribly when I lost his letters. They had been such a link, and for a while I was in outer darkness. And then--by degrees, after little Dinah came back to me--I began to find that after all there were other links. Helping her in her trouble helped me to bear my own. And I came to see that ministering to a need outside one's own is the surest means of finding comfort in sorrow for oneself. I have been very selfish Stumpy. I have been gradually waking to that fact for a long while. I used to immerse myself in those letters to try and get the feeling of his dear presence. Very, very often I didn't succeed. And I know now that it was because I was forcing myself to look back and not forward. I think material things are apt to make one do that. But when material things are taken quite away, then one is forced upon the spiritual. And that is what has happened to me. No one can take anything from me now because what I possess is laid up in store for me. I am moving forward towards it every day."
She ceased to speak, and again for the space of seconds the silence fell.
Scott broke it, speaking slowly, as if not wholly certain of the wisdom of speech. "I did not know," he said, "that you had lost those letters."
Her face contracted momentarily with the memory of a past pain. "Eustace destroyed them," she stated simply.
His brows drew sharply together. "Isabel! Do you mean that?"
She pressed his hand. "Yes, dear. I knew you would feel it badly so I didn't tell you before. He acted for the best. I see that quite clearly now. And--in a sense--the best has come of it."
Scott got to his feet with the gesture of a man who can barely restrain himself. "He did--that?" he said.
She reached up a soothing hand. "My dear, it doesn't matter now. Don't be angry with him. I know that he meant well."
Scott's eyes looked down into hers, intensely bright, burningly alive. "No wonder," he said, breathing deeply, "that you never want to see him again!"