She caught her breath, listening—­for what she did not know.  Once again, just as it had been in that other dawn, in that other room where the Enemy had been conquered, the sense of some great happiness was in the air, was coming to her swiftly.  But now the greater Enemy had been outfought, the morning of a greater day was breaking and spreading, and the greatest happiness in the world was preparing for her.  How it had happened she did not know.  Now was not the moment to think, to reason, to reflect.  It seemed as though the rushing of wings was all about her, as though a light brighter than the day was just about to break upon her sight, as though a music divinely beautiful was just about to burst upon her ear.  But the light was not for her eye; the music was not for her ear.  The radiance and the harmony came from herself, from within her.  The intellect was numb.  Only the heart was alive on this wonderful midsummer’s morning, and it was in her heart that the radiance shone and the harmony vibrated.  Back in his place once more, high on his throne, the love that she believed had forever departed from her sat exalted and triumphant, singing to the cadence of that unheard music, shining and magnificent in the glory of that new-dawned light.

Would Bennett live?  Suddenly that question leaped up in her mind and stood in the eye of her imagination, terrible, menacing—­a hideous, grim spectre, before which Lloyd quailed with failing heart and breath.  The light, the almost divine radiance that had burst upon her, nevertheless threw a dreadful shadow before it.  Beneath the music she heard the growl of the thunder.  Her new-found happiness was not without its accompanying dismay.  Love had not returned to her heart alone.  With it had returned the old Enemy she had once believed had left her forever.  Now it had come back.  As before, it lurked and leered at her from dark corners.  It crept to her side, to her back, ready to leap, ready to strike, to clutch at her throat with cold fingers and bear her to the earth, rending her heart with a grief she told herself she could not endure and live.  She loved him now with all her mind and might; how could it ever have been otherwise?  He belonged to her—­and she?  Why, she only lived with his life; she seemed so bound to him as to be part of his very self.  Literally, she could not understand how it would be possible for her to live if he should die.  It seemed to her that with his death some mysterious element of her life, something vital and fundamental, for which there was no name, would disintegrate upon the instant and leave her without the strength necessary for further existence.  But this would, however, be a relief.  The prospect of the years after his death, the fearful loneliness of life without him, was a horror before which she veritably believed her reason itself must collapse.

“Lloyd.”

Bennett was awake again and watching her with feverish anxiety from where he lay among the pillows.  “Lloyd,” he repeated, the voice once so deep and powerful quavering pitifully.  “I was wrong.  I don’t want you to go.  Don’t leave me.”