Chapter LXX

And then I rode,
As fast as trains could take me; and I wrote,
Like one intoxicated, from the inn:
“The bureau’s agent here abides your wish”;
And, signing not my name, awaited thus
The welcome sure to seem more sweet than life.
It came. I went.

“You?” Edith cried, “and whence?”
“From whence?” I said. “Each slightest spark of good
Flies upward, and the heaven returns it where
It fires the most?—and where were tinder found
Like my heart?”
“Why is this?” I heard; “My note—
Did it miscarry?—Would you thwart me now—
Or, though my gifts could aid them, do they wish
No help from me?—My heart was fix’d on it.”

“On my cause,” breathed I. “Did you never think
That work with them would make you work with me?”

“Why think of that?” she ask’d.—“Enough to know
I sought my own work here.”

“Why, Edith, friend,”
I answer’d—“Why could not your work be mine?
What parts us now? What though, like mine, your soul
Had come to look down life’s long dreary vista,
And watch yourself alone. Why bide alone?
I, I, at least, through all these years have seen—
Not you yourself, for that too dear had been!—
But I have seen a vision, seeming you
Within the far horizon of my hopes,
The sweet mirage before me. Now, at last,
I know those misty outlines veil’d the truth;
It must have meant that you would yet be found—
That we should meet. Heaven surely meant it so.”