Without that extremity, at the end of a moment, he had taken in what he needed to take--that his wife was TESTIFYING, that she adored and missed and desired him.

"After all, after all," since she put it so, she was right.

That was what he had to respond to; that was what, from the moment that, as has been said, he "saw," he had to treat as the most pertinent thing possible.

He held her close and long, in expression of their personal reunion--this, obviously, was one way of doing so.

He rubbed his cheek, tenderly, and with a deep vague murmur, against her face, that side of her face she was not pressing to his breast.