“I have deserved it,” he muttered to himself.  “It is too late to amend.”

Some light touch thrilled his arm.

“Is it too late, Stephen?” whispered a childish voice.

The strong man trembled, looking at the little dark figure standing near him.

“We were both wrong; let us be friends again.”

She went back unconsciously to the old words of their quarrels long ago.  He drew back.

“Do not mock me,” he gasped.  “I suffer, Margaret.  Do not mock me with more courtesy.”

“I do not; let us be friends again.”

She was crying like a penitent child; her face was turned away; love, pure and deep, was in her eyes.

The red fire-light grew stronger; the clock hushed its noisy ticking to hear the story.  Holmes’s pale lip worked:  what was this coming to him?  He dared not hope, yet his breast heaved, a dry heat panted in his veins, his deep eyes flashed fire.

“If my little friend comes to me,” he said, in a smothered voice, “there is but one place for her,—­her soul with my soul, her heart on my heart.”—­He opened his arms.—­“She must rest her head here.  My little friend must be—­my wife.”

She looked into the strong, haggard face,—­a smile crept out on her own, arch and debonair like that of old time.

“I am tired, Stephen,” she whispered, and softly laid her head down on his breast.

The red fire-light flashed into a glory of crimson through the room, about the two figures standing motionless there,—­shimmered down into awe-struck shadow:  who heeded it?  The old clock ticked away furiously, as if rejoicing that weary days were over for the pet and darling of the house:  nothing else broke the silence.  Without, the deep night paused, gray, impenetrable.  Did it hope that far angel-voices would break its breathless hush, as once on the fields of Judea, to usher in Christmas morn?  A hush, in air, and earth, and sky, of waiting hope, of a promised joy.  Down there in the farm-window two human hearts had given the joy a name; the hope throbbed into being; the hearts touching each other beat in a slow, full chord of love as pure in God’s eyes as the song the angels sang, and as sure a promise of the Christ that is to come.  Forever and ever,—­not even death would part them; he knew that, holding her closer, looking down into her face.

What a pale little face it was!  Through the intensest heat of his passion the sting touched him:  it was but one mark of his murderous selfishness.  Some instinct made her glance up at him, as he thought this, with a keen insight, and she lifted her head from his breast, and when he stooped to touch her lips, shook herself free, laughing carelessly.  Their whole life was before them to taste happiness, and she had a mind they should taste it drop by drop.  Alas, Stephen Holmes! you will have little time for morbid questionings in those years to come:  your very pauses of silent content and love will be rare and well-earned.  No more tranced raptures for to-night,—­let tomorrow bring what it would.