"
The door opened wide, and Justin faced Nancy standing halfway down the aisle,
her eyes brilliant, her lips parted. A week ago Justin's apparition
confronting her in the empty meeting-house after nightfall, even had she been
prepared for it as now, by his voice, would have terrified her beyond measure.
Now it seemed almost natural and inevitable. She had spent these last days in
the church where both of them had been young and happy together; the two
letters had brought him vividly to mind, and her labor in the old Peabody pew
had been one long excursion into the past in which he was the most prominent
and the best-loved figure.
"I said I'd come back to you when my luck turned, Nancy."
These were so precisely the words she expected him to say, should she ever see
him again face to face, that for an additional moment they but heightened her
sense of unreality.
"Well, the luck hasn't turned, after all, but I could n't wait any longer.
Have you given a thought to me all these years, Nancy?"
"More than one, Justin." For the very look upon his face, the tenderness of
his voice, the attitude of his body, outran his words and told her what he had
come home to say, told her that her years of waiting were over at last.
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