Volume Ii Part 15 (2/2)

'I wish to G.o.d that I could do more than merely understand you, I wish to G.o.d that I were capable of feeling with you, believing with you, Valdez.'

'Nay, lad, you've tried; you've done your best. And when you found you'd undertaken more than you could well accomplish, still you went on,--you went on. To be faithful, my Dino, to keep faith simply and joyously, is to reach and hold the essential best of life. But to keep faith at any price, in any fas.h.i.+on, to do it even grudgingly, counting the cost, looking back at the world with all its temptations, yet, even then, moving away from them, however slowly--well, even that is enough to give some touch of divine dignity to a life. It is reaching the end without the glow of the triumph, but still the end _is_ reached. We can't all of us claim the praise as well as the victory, and yet the victory is there.'

He spoke with all the force and fervour of a life-long conviction. The faint light streaming in at the small high window gave a solemn look of isolation to the narrow room; it seemed a fitting background for the worn undaunted face.

But presently the old man's glance softened. He held out both his hands.

'You're young, lad, you're young, and all the best of life's before you. It makes me glad to think of that still. For you've made a great difference in my life, Dino. And it hurt me, ay, it hurt me to think that I had injured yours.'

'Valdez--if I'm ever worth anything--if I ever learn to believe unreservedly in anything---- Oh, I can't say it. But you know what I mean;--I owe it all to you.'

They grasped one another's hands hard as the key turned harshly in the lock of the door behind them. They spoke no word of farewell.

Palmira was waiting for Dino in the jailor's lodge by the entrance.

The child gave one quick anxious look into her brother's quivering face, then she slipped her hand quietly into his without speaking.

Both were silent until they stood outside the iron gates. Then Dino stood still. He was weak yet, and confused from the fever. He could scarcely understand how much of what was pa.s.sing around him was real.

He stood there hesitating; surely it was no delusion that he had pledged his very life away? Yet he stood there, a free man, in the April sunlight; with the hand of a little child in his, and behind him was the prison door.

He crossed over to the small piazza; he went and sat on a wooden bench beside the fountain; it wanted an hour yet to the time of the starting of the Leghorn train.

'Are we not going back now, my Dino, to Italia?' Palmira asked, after a long pause, eyeing him anxiously.

'Ay.'

He answered like a man in a dream. And it was a dream of coming joy which held him silent; a vision of flood-tides filling all the empty places of existence; a happy vision of love, strong to conceal and strong to forget;--of Italia, waiting by the sea.

THE END.

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