But the really vital thing, the core of the short history, she followed slowly word by word, anxiously.  It told of wonders which she did not know—­love, passion, despair!  Now indeed he seemed to be speaking in a strange language—­yet not strange entirely.  She hid each broken phrase in her heart, knowing them rare, and wondering at the treasure entrusted to her.  Some of her girlhood she left behind her as she listened.  Something new, yet surely old, stirred faintly.  What was this love he spoke of?  The breath of bygone passion brushed across her untouched soul and left it trembling!

Into the long silence which followed the story her voice drifted like a sigh.

“If she could only have lived until you came!”

It was of the girl wife she thought.  Her heart was full of an aching pity for that other girl whom life had cheated of her sweetest gift.  More than the man who had lived out a bitter expiation, did she pity her who had missed the fight, slipped out of the struggle.  Death seemed to Esther such a terrible thing.  The new life stirring in her shuddered at the thought of mortality.  That breath of the divine which we name Love began already to proclaim itself immortal.

Yet Molly, that other girl, had loved—­and died.

The doctor, too, was lost in self communings.  Already, with the words not cold upon his lips, he was surprised that he had told the story.  How could he?  Why had he?  That pitiful little story of Molly which had been too sacred for the touch of a word.  Above all, why had the telling been a relief?  It was a relief, he knew that.  Somewhere, in the silver waters of Pine Lake he had buried a burden.  He felt lighter, younger.  Had his very love for Molly become a load whose proper name was remorse?  Had his heart harboured regret and fear under the name of sorrow?  Or had he never loved at all, never really sorrowed?  Had the thing he called love been but a boy’s hot passion caught in the grip of a man’s awakening will, a mistake made irrevocable by a stubbornness of purpose which could not face defeat?  Whatever it had been, it had come to be a burden.  And the burden had lightened—­it pressed no longer.  In a word, he was free!  He was his own man again, unafraid, able to look into his heart, to open all the windows—­no dark corners, no haunting ghosts!  He could enter now without the dread of echoing footsteps or wistful, half-heard whisperings.  The shade of pretty, childish Molly would vex no more.

The relief of it—­the pain of it!  It was like a new birth.

Meanwhile the strong, sure strokes were bringing them swiftly nearer the opposite shore where yellow dots of light proclaimed the position of the summer cottages.  One dot, larger, detached itself from the others and indicated the flare on the end of the landing float.  Outlines began to be darkly discernible, the moon’s silver mirror was shivered by lances of gold.  Very soon their journey would be ended.