_ CHAPTER XXXIV. AFTER THE DELUGE
In one elemental instant there was loosed in the soul of Mary Gage a pent flood of emotion. She let her heart go, let in the wilderness of primitive things again. She was alive! She could see! She could be as other women!
The flood of relief, of joy, of yearning, was a thing cosmic, so strong that regret and grief were for the time swept on and buried in the welter of emotions running free.
It was as though she had stepped absolutely from one world into another. Suddenly, the people of her old world were gone. There had been a shadow, a strange, magnified shadow of a soul, this man who had been called her husband. But now with astonishing swiftness and clarity of vision she knew that he never had been a husband to her. What another had told her was the truth. He never had allowed her to touch his hand, his face, he never had laid a hand on hers, never had called her by any name of love, never had kissed her or sought to do so. And he was gone now, so absolutely that not even the image of him could remain had she ever owned an image of him. She never had known him, and now never could.
Alas! Sim Gage, shall we say? By no means. Happy Sim Gage! For he passed at the climax of his life and took with him forever all he ever could have gained of delight and comfort. Happy Sim Gage! to have a woman like Mary, his wife, stand and weep for him now. He had lost her had she ever seen his face, and now, at least, he owned her tears. A vast and noble flood carried happy Sim Gage out to the ocean at the end of all, to the rest and the absorption and the peace.
Mary Gage pushed back the bandage from her eyes furtively, unable to obey longer any command which cut her off from this new world to which she had come. Before she dropped the bandage once more she had caught sight of a figure not looking toward her at the moment.
Allen Barnes was standing with his head up, his eyes looking out over the abysmal scene below. Behind his back he had gripped tight together his long and sinewy hands. He was a lean and broad man, so she thought. He stood in the uniform of his country, made for manly men, and beseeming only such. The neatness of good rearing even now was apparent in every line of him. Dust seemed not to have touched him. He was clean and trim and fine, a picture of an officer and a gentleman.
Light, and the new music of the spheres--to whom did she owe those things? It was to this man standing yonder.
"McQueston," she heard a sharp voice command, "take your men and go down to the lower dam--any way you can get across the mountains. Bring your report up by one of these cars when you get back here. I'll go up above to the upper station with these people. It's going to rain. That will end the fire."
He saluted sharply in return, and turned again to those under his personal charge.
"Get into the car," he said. Mary Gage felt his hand steadying her arm. He took his place at the steering wheel, Wid Gardner alongside, Annie and herself being left to the rear seat of the tonneau. It was reckless driving that Doctor Allen Barnes did once more. They out-ran the approaching valley storm, and so presently came into the gate of that place where once had lived Sim Gage. They dismounted from the car and stood, a forlorn group, looking at the scene before them as funeral mourners returning, not liking the thought of going into a deserted home from which a man is gone never to return. _