When Helen had received a brief note from Tom the night before the election that he would surely reach home the next day, she snatched his picture from the library table with a cry of joy and rushed to her room.

She placed the little gold frame on her bureau, sat down before it and poured out her heart in silly speeches of love, pausing to laugh and kiss the glass that saved the miniature from ruin. The portrait was an exquisite work of art on ivory which the father had commisioned a painter in New York to do in celebration of Tom\'s coming of age. The artist had caught the boy\'s spirit in the tender smile that played about his lips and lingered in the corners of his blue eyes, the same eyes and lips in line and color in the dainty little mother\'s portrait over the mantel.

"Oh, you big, handsome, brave, glorious boy!" she cried in ecstasy. "My sweetheart--so generous, so clean, so strong, so free in soul! I love you--I love you--I love you!"

She fell asleep at last with the oval frame clasped tight in one hand thrust under her pillow. A sound sleep was impossible, the busy brain was too active. Again and again she waked with a start, thinking she had heard his swift footfall on the stoop.

[Pg 341]

At daybreak she leaped to her feet and found herself in the middle of the room laughing when she came to herself, the precious picture still clasped in her hand.

"Oh, foolish heart, wake up!" she cried with another laugh. "It\'s dawn, and my lover is coming! It\'s his day! No more sleep—it\'s too wonderful! I\'m going to count every hour until I hear his step—every minute of every hour, foolish heart!"

She looked out the window and it was raining. The overhanging boughs of the oaks were dripping on the tin roof of the bay window in which she was standing. She had dreamed of a wonderful sunrise this morning. But it didn\'t matter—the rain didn\'t matter. The slow, familiar dropping on the roof suggested the nearness of her lover. They would sit in some shadowy corner hand in hand and love all the more tenderly. The raindrops were the drum beat of a band playing the march that was bringing him nearer with each throb. The mocking-bird that had often waked her with his song was silent, hovering somewhere in a tree beneath the thick leaves. She had expected him to call her to-day with the sweetest lyric he had ever sung. Somehow it didn\'t matter. Her soul was singing the song that makes all other music dumb.

"My love is coming!" she murmured joyfully. "My love is coming!"

And then she stood for an hour in brooding, happy silence and watched the ghost-like trees come slowly out of the mists. To her shining eyes there were no mists. The gray film that hung over the waking world was a bridal veil hiding the blushing face of the earth from[Pg 342] the sun-god lover who was on his way over the hills to clasp her in his burning arms!

For the first time in her memory she was supremely happy.

Every throb of pain that belonged to the past was lost in the sea of joy on which her soul had set sail. In the glory of his love pain was only another name for joy. All she had suffered was but the preparation for this supreme good. It was all the more wonderful, this fairy world into which she had entered, because the shadows had been so deep in her lonely childhood.

There really hadn\'t been any past! She couldn\'t remember the time she had not known and loved Tom. Love filled the universe, past, present and future. There was no task too hard for her hands, no danger she was not ready to meet. The hungry heart had found its own.

Through the long hours of the day she waited without impatience. Each tick of the tiny clock on the mantel brought him nearer. The hands couldn\'t turn back! She watched them with a smile as she sat in the gathering twilight.

She had placed the miniature back in its place and sat where her eye caught the smile from his lips when she lifted her head from the embroidery on her lap.

The band was playing a stirring strain in the Square. She could hear the tumult and the shouts of the crowds about the speaker\'s stand as they read the bulletins of the election. The darkness couldn\'t hold him many more minutes.

She rose with a soft laugh and turned on the lights, walked to the ............