The day was late in June, and a rich, thick amber light floated through the glades of the forest.  Majestic white clouds sailed in the deep blue sky.  The sun shone hot down into the glades.  Under the pines and maples there was a cool sweet shade.  Wild flowers bloomed.  A fragrance of the woods came on the gentle breeze.  The leaves rustled.  The melancholy song of a hermit thrush pierced the stillness.  A crow cawed from a high oak.  The murmur of shallow water running over rocks came faintly to Lane’s ears.

Lane surrendered utterly to the sheer primitive exultation of life.  The supreme ecstasy of that hour could never have been experienced but for the long hopeless months which had preceded it.  For a long time he lay there in a transport of the senses, without thinking.  As soon as thought regained dominance over his feelings there came a subtle change in his reaction to this situation.

He had forgotten much.  He had lived in a dream.  He had unconsciously grown well.  He had been strangely, unbelievably happy.  Why?  Mel Iden had nursed him, loved him, inspired him back to health.  Her very presence near him, even unseen, had been a profound happiness.  He made the astonishing discovery that for months he had thought of little else besides his wife.  He had lived a lonely life, in his room, and in the open, but all of it had been dominated by his dreams and fancies and emotions about her.  He had roused from his last illness with the past apparently dead.  There was no future.  So he lived in the moment, the hour.  While he lay awake in the silence of night, or toiled over his wood pile, or wandered by the brook under the trees, his dreamy thoughts centered about her.  And now the truth burst upon him.  His love for her had been stronger than his ruined health and blasted life, stronger than misfortune, stronger than death.  It had made him well.  He had not now to face death, but life.  And the revelation brought on shuddering dread.

Lane lingered in the woods until late afternoon.  Then he felt forced to return to the cottage.  The look of the whole world seemed changed.  All was actual, vivid, striking.  Mel’s loveliness burst upon him as new and strange and terrible as the fact of his recovery.  He had hidden his secret from her.  He had been like a brother, kind, thoughtful, gay at times, always helpful.  But he had remained aloof.  He had basked in the sunshine of her presence, dreamily reveling in the consciousness of what she was to him.  That hour had passed forever.

He saw her now as his wife, a girl still, one who had been cruelly wronged by life, who had turned her back upon the past and who lived for him alone.  She had beauty and brains, a wonderful voice, and personality that might have fitted her for any career or station in life.  She thought only of him.  She had found content in ministering to him.  She was noble and good.