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It was like the radiance one sees in the old pictures of the Holy Family. Together Fanny and Heyl watched it in silence until the last pale glimmer faded and was gone, and only the brazen lights of Gary, far, far down the beach, cast a fiery glow against the sky. They sighed, simultaneously. Then they laughed, each at the other. "Curtain," said Fanny. They raced for the station, despite the sand.
They ate their dinner in olympic splendor, atop a dune. Heyl produced unexpected things from the rucksack things that ranged all the way from milk chocolate to literature, and from grape juice to cigarettes. They ate ravenously, but at Heyl's thrifty suggestion they saved a few sandwiches for the late afternoon.
It might as well be entitled Springtime." "This isn't France or Russia," said Fanny. "Antagonism here isn't religious. It's personal, almost. You've been away so many years you've forgotten. They don't object to us as a sect, or a race, but as a type. That's the trouble, Clarence Heyl says. We're free to build as many synagogues as we like, and worship in them all day, if we want to.
Fanny and Heyl stopped short, faces upturned. The ghostly radiance wavered, expanded, glowed palely, like celestial searchlights. Suddenly, from the tip of each shaft, there burst a cluster of slender, pin-point lines, like aigrettes set in a band of silver. Then these slowly wavered, faded, combined to form a third and fourth slender shaft of light.
The snow hid him from sight at once. "Here lies Sarah Cannon. Lay to rest and died alone, April 26, 1893." She sank down, and pillowed her head on her arms. She knew that this was the end. She was very drowsy, and not at all sad. Happy, if anything. "You didn't really think I'd leave you, did you, Fan?" She opened her eyes. Heyl was there. He reached down, and lifted her lightly to her feet.
Fanny, at the rail, found her two among the crowd, and smiled down upon them, mistily. Ella was waving energetically. Heyl was standing quite still, looking up. The ship swung clear, crept away from the dock. The good-bys swelled to a roar. Fanny leaned far over the rail and waved too, a sob in her throat. Then she saw that she was waving with the hand that held the yellow telegram.
The name that came to her over the telephone conveyed nothing to her. "Who?" Again the name. "Heyl?" She repeated the name uncertainly. "I'm afraid I O, of course! Clarence Heyl. Howdy-do." "I want to see you," said the voice, promptly. There rose up in Fanny's mind a cruelly clear picture of the little, sallow, sniveling school boy of her girlhood.
He looked straight ahead. When you drive a mountain steamer you do look straight ahead. A glance to the right or left is so likely to mean death, or at best a sousing in the Thompson that foams and rushes below. Fanny ventured a question. "Do you know Mr. Heyl?" "Heyl? Took him down day before yesterday." "Down?" "To the village. He's gone back east."
She returned that kiss, and, strangely enough, it was the one that stayed in her memory long, long after the other had faded. "Oh, Clancy, I've made such a mess of it all. Such a miserable mess. The little girl in the red tam was worth ten of me. I don't see how you can care for me." "You're the most wonderful woman in the world," said Heyl, "and the most beautiful and splendid."
They lay there, silent, while the scarlet became orange, the orange faded to rose, the rose to pale pink, to salmon, to mauve, to gray. The first pale star came out, and the brazen lights of Gary, far to the north, defied it. Fanny sat up with a sigh and a little shiver. "Fasten up that sweater around your throat," said Heyl. "Got a pin?"
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