Silence while she was gathering the sweet-smelling tangle in her lap into some more portable arrangement.  And afterward, when they were drifting slowly homeward in the lengthening shadows, a small asking.

“Mr. Morelock is coming out to-morrow to hold service in St. John’s, and I shall go to play for him.  Will you go with me, Tom?”

He smiled out of the gold and sapphire depths of a lover’s reverie.

“One week from the day after the day after to-morrow—­and it will be the longest week-and-two-days of my life, dearest—­your grandfather will take you to church, and I shall bring you away.  Won’t that be enough?”

She took him quite seriously.

“I shall never be a Felicita Young-Dickson, and drag you,” she promised.  “But, O Tom!  I wish—­”

“I know,” he said gently.  “You are thinking of the days to come; when the paths may diverge—­yours and mine—­ever so little; when there may be children to choose between their mother’s faith and their father’s indifference.  But I am not indifferent.  So far from it, I am only anxious now to prove what I was once so bent on disproving.”

“You yourself are the strongest proof,” she interposed.  “You will see it, some day.”

“Shall I?  I hope so; and that is an honest hope.  And really and truly, I think I have come up a bit—­out of the wilderness, you know.  I am willing to admit that this is the best of all possible worlds; and I want to do my part in making it a little better because I have lived in it.  Also, I’d like to believe in something bigger and better than protoplasm.”

Her smile was of the kind which stands half-way in the path to tears, but she spoke bravely to the doubt in his reply.

“You do believe, Tom, dear; you have never seen the moment when you did not.  It was the doubt that was unreal.  When the supreme test came, it was God’s hand that restrained you; you know it now—­you knew it at the time.  And afterward it was His grace that enabled you to do what was just and right.  Haven’t you admitted all this to yourself?”

They had crossed the white pike to the manor-house gates and were turning aside from the driveway into the winding lawn path when he said: 

“To myself, and to one other.”  Then, very softly:  “I sat at my mother’s knee last night, Ardea, and told her all there was to tell.”

Ardea’s eyes were shining.  “What did she say, Tom, dear—­or is it more than I should ask?”

“There is nothing you may not ask.  She said—­it wasn’t altogether true, I’m afraid—­but she put her arms around my neck and cried and said:  For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.”

She slipped her arm in his, and there was a little sob of pure joy at the catching of her breath.  The moon was just rising above the Lebanon cliff-line, and the beauty of the glorious night-dawn possessed her utterly.  Ah, it was a good world and a generous, bringing rich gifts to the steadfast!  Instinctively she felt that Tom’s little confession did not require an answer; that he was battling his way to the heights which must be taken alone.