"I am coming," she whispered, not sure if she was answering in a dream
to a voice in a dream. But the light of the wondrous sea was dimmed to
the light of an earthly sunset. Through it Vanno's eyes called to her as
his voice had called--those eyes which had been her stars of love--and
she forgot the brighter light, just seen and lost.
"You!" she said. "It's like--heaven----"
"It is heaven--now," he answered, as he held her closely.
* * * * * * *
When Mary was well again, the cure married her to her Prince, and the
two went together into the desert that Vanno loved. There it did not
matter to them that Angelo was thinking coldly and harshly of them
both; and perhaps there was even an added sweetness in Mary's happiness
because a sacrifice of hers could spare pain to one very near to Vanno.
She would not let her husband say that he could not forgive his brother.
"But if our love is to be perfect, we must forgive Angelo, and poor
Marie too," she told him.
Late in the summer (they had left Egypt long ago, and were in the high
mountains of Algeria), one day a letter came to Vanno, forwarded on from
place after place, where it had missed him. Angelo had written at last.
"Perhaps you may have seen," he said, "in some paper, that in giving me
a little daughter my wife died. She left a letter to be handed me after
her death, if a presentiment she had were fulfilled. If she had lived, I
would have forgiven her.
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