The Main Chance Part 50

"It is hideous--it was cowardly of me to come here."

His hands were clenched and his face twitched with pain. "Oh, if he had lived! If he had lived!"

She rose now and looked at him with an infinite pity. This is one of G.o.d's unreckoned gifts to man,--the gift of pity that He has made the great secret of a woman's eyes. Evelyn's were gray now, like the stretch of sea beyond her, where a mist was creeping sh.o.r.eward over the blue water.

"If he had lived," she said very softly, looking away through the sun-dappled aisles of the orchard, "if he had lived--it would have been the same, John."

But he did not understand. His name as she spoke it rang strange in his ears. The letter had fallen to the ground and lay in the gra.s.s between them; he half stooped to pick it up, not knowing what he did.

She walked away through the orchard path, which suddenly became to him a path of gold that stretched into paradise; and he sprang after her with a great fear in his heart lest some barrier might descend and shut her out forever.

"Evelyn! Evelyn!"

It was not a voice that called her; it was a spirit, long held in thrall, that had shaken free and become a name.