Well, granted all that! What did it matter now?
They would but hunt a myth! Between them and himself now there stood the
Tocsin's note. "The way is clearing.... I am very happy to-night." She
would not have written that unless she were very sure. To-morrow,
perhaps, and Smarlinghue, and the Gray Seal, and Larry the Bat would
have passed forever out of existence, and there would be only Jimmie
Dale, and _she,_ and love--and a phantom left behind in the underworld
against whom the underworld and this evil genius of crime might pit
their wits to their hearts' content!
There was an uplift upon him, a sense of freedom so great that it seemed
actually physical as well as mental. Peril, danger, the strain of the
dual life until the nerves were worn raw, the constant anxiety for her
safety--all were gone now. "It is the beginning of the end ... the way
is clearing"--she had written that tonight. And it meant that, refusing,
as she had said, to let him come into the shadows again, she had won
through--alone. It brought a little, curious pang of disappointment to
him that he should share now only in the reward; but the pang was
swallowed up in that it brought him a deeper knowledge of her unselfish
love, her splendid courage, and--he could find no other word--her
wonderfulness.
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