The message in the envelope was in its way as impersonal as the ruby had been but Tony found it more hauntingly personal than she had ever found his most impassioned love letter.  Once more the words were couched in the symbol tongue of the poet in India—­in only two sentences, but sentences so poignant that they stamped themselves forever on Tony Holiday’s mind as they stood out from the paper in Alan’s beautiful, striking handwriting.

“When the lighted lamp is brought into the room
    I shall go. 
 And then perhaps you will listen to the night, and
    hear my song when I am silent.”

The lines were dated on that unforgettable night when Tony had played Broadway and danced her last dance with her royal lover.  So he had known even then that he was giving her up.  Realizing this Tony realized as she never had before the high quality of his love.  She could guess a little of what that night had meant to him, how passionately he must have desired to win through to the full fruition of his love before he gave her up for all the rest of time.  And she herself had been mad that night Tony remembered.  Ah well!  He had been strong for them both.  And now their love would always stay upon the high levels, never descend to the ways of earth.  There would never be anything to regret, though Tony loving her lover’s memory as she did that moment was not so sure but she regretted that most of all.

Yet tragic as Alan’s death was and bitterly and sincerely as she mourned his loss Tony could see that he had after all chosen the happiest way out for himself as well as for her and his cousin.  It was not hard to forgive a dead lover with a generous act of renunciation his last deed.  It would have been far less easy to forgive a living lover with such a stain upon his life.  Even though he tried to wash it away by his surrender and she by her forgiveness the stain would have remained ineradicable.  There would always have been a barrier between them for all his effort and her own.

And his love would ill have borne denial or frustration.  Without her he would have gone down into dark pits if he had gone on living.  Perhaps he had known and feared this himself, willing to prevent it at any cost.  Perhaps he had known that so long as he lived she, Tony, would never have been entirely her own again.  His bondage would have been upon her even if he never saw her again.  Perhaps he had elected death most of all for this reason, had loved her well enough to set her free.  He had told her once that love was twofold, a force of destruction and damnation but also a force of purification and salvation.  Alan had loved her greatly, perhaps in the end his love had taken him in his own words “to the gate of Heaven.”  Tony did not know but she thought if there really was a God he would understand and forgive the soul of Alan Massey for that last splendid sacrifice of his in the name of love.

And whatever happened Tony Holiday knew that she would bear forever the mark of Alan Massey’s stormy, strange, and in the end all-beautiful love.  Perhaps some day the lighted lamp might be brought in.  She did not know, would not attempt to prophesy about that.  She did not know that she would always listen to the night for Alan Massey’s sake and hear his song though he was silent forever.