Stern drew Beatrice into his arms. Blind though the old man was, he sensed the act, and smiled. A great and holy peace had shrouded him.
“Only that I may feel the sun upon my face!” breathed he.
All at once a thinning cloud-haze let the light glow through.
Beatrice looked at Stern. He shook his head.
“Not yet,” he answered.
Swiftly uprose the sun. The morning wind dispelled the shrouding vapors.
“Oh, what is this warmth?” exclaimed the patriarch, trembling violently. “What is this warmth, this glow upon my face? This life, this--”
Out toward the east he stretched both hands. Instinctively the priestlike worship of the sun, old when the world was still in infancy, surged back to him again after the long, lost centuries of darkness and oblivion.
“The sun! The sun!” he cried, his voice triumphant as a trumpet-call. Tears coursed from his blind eyes; but on his lips a smile of joy unutterable was set.
“The sun! At last! The--”
Stern caught his feeble body as he fell.
Down on the sands they laid him. To the stilled heart Stern laid his ear.
Tears were in his eyes, too, and in the girl's, as Stern shook his head, silently.
Up over the time-worn, the venerable, the kindly face they drew the mantle, but not before each had reverently kissed the wrinkled forehead.
“Better thus,” whispered the engineer. “Far better, every way. He had his wish; he felt the sunshine on his face; his outgoing spirit must be mingled with that worshipped light and air and sky--with dawn--with springtime--”
“With life itself!” said Beatrice.
And through her tears she smiled, while higher rose the warm, life-giving sun of spring.