The strong man broke down. His voice fell into low sobs--tears blinded his vision. He groped about for the hand of Irene, found it, and held it wildly to his lips.
Was it for a loving woman to hold back coldly now? No, no, no! That were impossible.
"My husband!" she said, tenderly and reverently, as she placed her saintly lips on his forehead.
There was a touching ceremonial at Ivy Cliff on the next day--one never to be forgotten by the few who were witnesses. A white-haired minister--the same who, more than twenty years before, had said to Hartley Emerson and Irene Delancy, "May your lives flow together like two pure streams that meet in the same valley,"--again joined their hands and called them "husband and wife." The long, dreary, tempestuous night had pa.s.sed away, and the morning arisen in brightness and beauty.
THE END.