A great choir was hymning now.  On the tops of the sweet old honeysuckles the cat-birds; robins in the low boughs of maples; on the high limb of the elm the silvery-throated lark, who had stopped as he passed from meadow to meadow; on a fence rail of the distant wheat-field the quail—­and many another.  I walked to and fro, receiving the voice of each as a spear hurled at my body.  The sun sank.  The shadows rushed on and deepened.  Suddenly, as I turned once more in my path, I caught sight of the figure of Georgiana moving straight towards me from the direction of the garden.  She was bareheaded, dressed in white; and she advanced over the smooth lawn, through evergreens and shrubs, with a gentle grace and dignity of movement such as I had never beheld.  I kept my weary pace, and when she came up I did not lift my eyes.

“Adam!” she said, with gentle reproach.  I stood still then, but with my face turned away.

“Forgive me!” All girlishness was gone out of her voice.  It was the woman at last.

I turned my face farther from her, and we stood in silence.

“I have suffered enough, Adam,” she pleaded.

I answered quietly, doggedly, for there was nothing left in me to appeal to: 

“I am glad we can part kindly. . . .  Neither of us may care much for the kindness now, but we will not be sorry hereafter. . . .  The quarrels, the mistakes, the right and the wrong of our lives, the misunderstandings—­they are so strange, so pitiful, so full of pain, and come so soon to nothing.”  And I lifted my hat, and took the path towards my house.

There was a point ahead where it divided, the other branch leading towards the little private gate through which Georgiana had come.  Just before reaching the porch I looked that way, with the idea that I should see Georgiana’s white figure moving across the lawn; but I discovered that she was following me.  Mounting my door-steps, I turned.  She had paused on the threshold.  I waited.  At length she said, in a voice low and sorrowful: 

“And you are not going to forgive me, Adam?”

“I do forgive you!” The silence fell and lasted.  I no longer saw her face.  At last her despairing voice barely reached me again: 

“And—­is—­that—­all?”

I had no answer to make, and sternly waited for her to go.

A moment longer she lingered, then turned slowly away; and I watched her figure growing fainter and fainter till it was lost.  I sprang after her; my voice rang out hollow, and broke with terror and pain and longing: 

“Georgiana!  Georgiana!”

“Oh, Adam, Adam!” I heard her cry, with low, piercing tenderness, as she ran back to me through the darkness.

When we separated we lighted fresh candles and set them in our windows, to burn a pure pathway of flame across the intervening void.  Henceforth we are like poor little foolish children, so sick and lonesome in the night without one another.  Happy, happy night to come when one short candle will do for us both!