“Ephraim.”

Ephraim Croom fell back a step or two, as if his breath was set too quick by joy or fear.

Susannah could not speak again.

At length Ephraim stretched out his hands and grasped her arms gently, then more strongly, making sure that she was not a trick of light and shade.  Then, not knowing at all what he did, he clasped her in sudden haste to his breast.

Susannah felt his arms wrap about her as if she had been a little child.  She had never felt, never conceived, of closeness and tenderness like this.  Ephraim, his breast heaving and his arms folding closer and closer, was out of himself.  There was no conscious meaning expressed by him, but she knew, knew at once without shadow of doubt that he himself had been the dreamer of whom he wrote to her, who had learned so much by yielding all the loves of his heart to one, and that she was that woman.

It was a long moment; at last, as if waking from a dream, Ephraim relinquished his hold.  He leaned against the side of a pew, and his eager look seemed to hold and fold her still.  In the dim light she could not see his eye, but she felt the delight of his glance falling upon her, a brighter, softer influence than the mantle of the moonlight.

She laid a hand lightly on his shoulder with a motherly touch.

“I have startled you, dear Ephraim; I hope I have done you no harm.”

He made as yet no answer but to take her hand, grasping it with rough heartiness as if this was the first moment of their meeting.

Susannah laughed as women sometimes laugh over their cherished ones for very joy, not amusement.  “Speak to me,” she coaxed.  “I have come back to you.  Do you think we are in a dream?” She let herself kneel on the old floor of the old aisle, and, clasping both his hands, laid them against her cheek.

With his returning self, something of his habitual formality of manner would have returned had she remained in any common attitude, but to this coaxing, kneeling queen Ephraim (although his whole life had passed without caresses) could not behave with reticence.

One thing he did not do.  He did not hint that it was unseemly that she should kneel at his feet.  Chivalry was the very substance of the soul of this son of New England, and no outward seeming could disturb his serene reverence for the woman he loved.  He stooped over her, now stroking her hair, how holding her hands close against his heart, now whispering words that in their audible passion were new and strange to his unaccustomed lips.

“I am all alone, Ephraim.  I have no money, no clothes.  I have walked most of the way from Rochester to-day.”

“Are you very tired?”—­as if the fact that she had been walking that day was all that needed his immediate attention.

“I was forced to come suddenly.  I only escaped with my life.  But I have long been wearying to come to you, for since my husband and the child died I have been quite alone.”