Virginia was almost as “presentable.” Her hat had been torn off and lost. Her hair was all over her face and shoulders. Her clothing was rent, and someone in the mad whirl of arms and hands had smeared her face with a wide streak of dirt.

They looked seriously at each other for a moment, then laughed. Out of the fullness of their hearts they laughed, not at each other, but together. If the sidewalk had not been crowded with people, what would they have said?

“I cannot thank you here,” Virginia said hurriedly. “What do people say when their lives are saved?”

“I do not know,” Stanton said in his deep, strong voice, softened to a whisper that lingered in Virginia’s heart. “I wish I did. For you have given me life today.”

Then, as if smitten with sudden fear, he who had all the courage of heroism, left her and went up the path to the doctor’s house. At the door, he turned before going in and watched Virginia as she went up the street. Her home was four blocks from her uncle’s. She also turned just an instant as he had, and each knew that, across that distance, over the heads of the excited throngs that were passing, the perfect song of a perfect romance was being sung in their hearts.

And each at the same moment was having the same thought that knit all of their new life up to that commanding, gracious, companionable, loving Person who, in some mysterious but real way, had been at the heart of their own thoughts of each other and always would be as long as love shall endure, which will be forever.

That night Mr. Maxwell’s house was besieged by representatives of the press. They clamored with increasing emphasis for admission. They all wanted to see this person calling himself Jesus and add to their already exciting accounts of the day’s happenings.

Henry Maxwell had refused admission to everyone. At nine o’clock that evening, the noise of the crowd and its demands became so insistent that Maxwell unlocked the front door and stepped out. The newspapermen gathered as close as they could get.

Mr. Maxwell pleaded with them to withdraw. “I can’t let in one without all. There are more than fifty of you. Besides, he is asleep.”

“Asleep?” asked a representative of a big New York paper. “Do you mean to say this person called Jesus has to sleep at this time of day?”

“He has to sleep just like any other person. Consider, gentlemen, he has had a most tiring day. He was exhausted when he reached my house after that mob. It would not be decent courtesy to disturb him.”

There was silence among the correspondents. Many of them were grown men, veterans in the newspaper world.

“But how are we going to get our stories?” asked a Chicago reporter.