He remembered how he had felt her presence in
those days when he had laughingly insisted to Conrad Lagrange that the
place was haunted. He remembered how, even when she was unknown to him,
her music had always moved him--how her message from the hills had seemed
to call to the best that was in him.
So it was, that, as he recalled these things,--as he lived again the days
of his companionship with her and realized how she had come into his life,
how she had appealed always to the best of him, and satisfied always his
best needs,--he came to know the answer to his questions--to his doubts
and fears and hopes. There, in the rose garden, with its dark walls of
hedge and vine and grove, in the still night under the stars, with his
face to the distant mountains, he knew that the mountain girl would not
deny him--that, when she was ready, she would come to him.
In the hour when Mr. Taine, with the last strength of his evil life,
profanely cursed the woman that his gold had bought to serve his
licentious will--and cursing--died; Aaron King--inspired by the character
and purity of the woman he loved, and by whom he knew he was loved, and
dreaming of their comradeship that was to be--dedicated himself anew to
the ministry of his art and so entered into that more abundant life which
belongs by divine right to all who will claim it.
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