_ PART SEVEN CHAPTER LXXX
The rising sun had barely shot its first beams over the eastern swell when Lane came to the tent to call them for the early breakfast before the day's expedition to a wonderful canon. Isabelle, making a sign to John not to disturb Margaret, who was still fast asleep, drew the blanket over her shoulders and joined her husband. The level light flooded the rolling upland with a sudden glory of gold, except along the outer rim of the horizon where the twilight color of deep violet still held. Husband and wife strolled away from the tents in the path of the sun.
"Big, isn't it?" he exclaimed.
"Yes!" she murmured. "It is a big, big world!" And linking her arm in his they walked on towards the sun together.
In the morning light the earth was fresh and large and joyous. And life, as Renault had said over the body of the dead child, seemed good, all of it! That which was past, lived vainly and in stress, and that which was to come as well. So Alice had affirmed in the presence of her bereavement.... Life is good, all of it,--all its devious paths and issues!
"It is so good to be here with you!" Isabelle whispered to her husband.
"Yes,--it is a good beginning," he replied. And in his face she read that he also understood that a larger life was beginning for them both.
As they turned back to the tents, they saw Margaret huddled in her blanket like a squaw, gazing steadily at the sun.
"And the morrow is added to the morrow to make eternity," she was murmuring to herself. "But always a new world, a new light, a new life!"
[THE END]
Robert Herrick's Novel: Together
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