Without the house the evening wind blew cool, moving the long branches of the beech tree, and rustling through the grass.  To the west the mountains showed faintly, in the valley a pale streak marked the river.  The sky was thick with stars.  Behind them, through the open door, they heard the tall clock strike.  “I did not tell you,” said Jacqueline, “of all my day.  Unity was here this afternoon.”

“Unity!”

“Yes.  For an hour.  She came with—­with messages.  My uncles send me word that they love me, and that Fontenoy is my home always—­as it used to be.  Whenever I wish, I am to come home.”

“What did you answer?”

“I answered that they were all dear to me, but that my home was here with you.  I told Unity to tell them that—­and to tell it, too, to Fairfax Cary.”

There was a silence; then, “It does not matter,” said Rand slowly.  “Whether it is done my way, or whether it is done his way, Fairfax Cary will not care.  He is concerned only that it shall be done.  You understood the message, Jacqueline?”

She answered almost inaudibly.  “Yes, I understood.”

“Seven months—­and Ludwell Cary lies unavenged.  I have been slow.  But I had to break a strong chain, Jacqueline.  I had fastened it, link by link, around my soul.  It was not easy to break—­it was not easy!  And I had to find a path in a desert place.”

She bowed her head upon her arms.  “Do I not know what it was?  I have seen—­I have seen.  O Lewis, Lewis!”

“It is broken,” he said, “and though the desert is yet around me, my feet have found the path.  To-morrow, Jacqueline, I give myself up.”

She uttered a cry, turned, and threw herself into his arms.  “To-morrow!  O Love!”

[Illustration:  DRINK TO ME ONLY WITH THINE EYES]

He bent over her with broken words of self-reproach.  She stopped him with her hand against his lips.  “No, I am not all unhappy—­no, you have not broken my heart—­you have not ruined my life!  Don’t say it—­don’t think it!  I love you as I loved you in the garden at Fontenoy, as I loved on our wedding eve, in the house on the Three-Notched Road!  I love you more deeply now than then—­”

“I have come,” he answered, “to be sorry for almost all my life.  Even to my father I might have been a better son.  The best friend a young man ever had—­that was Mr. Jefferson to me! and it all ended in the letter which he wrote last August.  I was a leader in a party in whose principles I believed and still believe, and I betrayed my party.  To-night I think I could give my life for one imperilled field, for one green acre of this land—­and yet I was willing to bring upon it strife and dissension.  Ingrate and traitor—­hard words and true, hard words and true!  I might have had a friend—­and always I knew he was the man I would have wished to be—­but, instead, I thought of him as my foe and I killed him.  I have brought trouble on many, and good to very few.  I have wronged you in very much.  But I never wronged you in my love—­never, never, Jacqueline!  That is my mountain peak—­that is my cleansing sea—­that is that in my life which needs no repenting, that is true, that is right!  Oh, my wife, my wife!”