For a long time he did not speak.  The words rose to his lips and failed of utterance, as the first mist of early morning is drawn heavenwards to vanish in the rising sun.  The long-drawn breath could have made no sound of sweeter meaning than the unspoken speech that rose in the deep gray eyes.  Nature’s grand organ, touched by hands divine, can yield no chord more moving than a lover’s sigh.

Words came at last, as after the welcome shower in summer’s heat the song of birds rings through the woods, and out across the fields, upon the clear, earth-scented air—­words fresh from their long rest within his heart, unused in years of loneliness but unforgotten and familiar still—­untarnished jewels from the inmost depths; rich treasures from the storehouse of a deathless faith; diamonds of truth, rubies of passion, pearls of devotion studding the golden links of the chain of love.

“At last—­at last—­at last!  Life of my life, the day is come that is not day without you, and now it will always be day for us two—­day without end and sun for ever!  And yet, I have seen you always in my night, just as I see you now.  As I hold your dear hands, I have held them—­day by day and year by year—­and I have smoothed that black hair of yours that I love, and kissed those dark eyes of yours many and many a thousand times.  It has been so long, love, so very long!  But I knew it would come some day.  I knew I should find you, for you have been always with me, dear—­always and everywhere.  The world is all full of you, for I have wandered through it all and taken you with me and made every place yours with the thought of you, and the love of you and the worship of you.  For me, there is not an ocean nor a sea nor a river, nor rock nor island nor broad continent of earth, that has not known Beatrice and loved her name.  Heart of my heart, soul of my soul—­the nights and the days without you, the lands and the oceans where you were not, the endlessness of this little world that hid you somewhere, the littleness of the whole universe without you—­how can you ever know what it has been to me?  And so it is gone at last—­gone as a dream of sickness in the morning of health; gone as the blackness of storm-clouds in the sweep of the clear west wind; gone as the shadow of evil before the face of an angel of light!  And I know it all.  I see it all in your eyes.  You knew I was true, and you knew I sought you, and would find you at last—­and you have waited—­and there has been no other, not the thought of another, not the passing image of another between us.  For I know there has not been that and I should have known it anywhere in all these years, the chill of it would have found me, the sharpness of it would have been in my heart—­no matter where, no matter how far—­yet say it, say it once—­say that you have loved me, too—­”

“God knows how I have loved you—­how I love you now!” Unorna said in a low, unsteady voice.