ity to take it, and, amid
all that warred in her, to carry it out on the brave high lines of her
inspiration. It seemed a literal inspiration, so perfectly calculated
that it was hard not to think sometimes, when one saw them together,
that Anna had been lulled into a simple resumption of the old relation.
Then from the least thing possible--the lift of an eyelid--it flashed
upon one that between these two every moment was dramatic, and one took
up the word with a curious sense of detachment and futility, but with
one's heart beating like a trip-hammer with the mad excitement of it.
The acute thing was the splendid sincerity of Judy Harbottle's response.
For days she was profoundly on her guard, then suddenly she seemed to
become practically, vividly aware of what I must go on calling the great
chance, and passionately to fling herself upon it. It was the strangest
cooperation without a word or a sign to show it conscious--a playing
together for stakes that could not be admitted, a thing to hang upon
breathless. It was there between them--the tenable ground of what they
were to each other: they occupied it with almost an equal eye upon
the tide that threatened, while I from my mainland tower also made an
anguished calculation of the chances. I think in spite of the menace,
they found real beatitudes; so keenly did they set about the business
that it brought them moments finer than any they could count in the
years that were behind them, the flat and colourless years that were
gone. Once or twice the wild idea even visited me that it was, after
all, the projection of his mother in Somers that had so seized Judy
Harbottle, and that the original was all that was needed to help the
happy process of detachment. Somers himself at the time was a good deal
away on escort duty: they had a clear field.

I can not tell exactly when--between Mrs. Harbottle and myself--it
became a matter for reference more or less overt, I mean her defined
problem, the thing that went about between her and the sun. It will be
imagined that it did not come up like the weather; indeed, it was hardly
ever to be envisaged and never to be held; but it was always there, and
out of our joint consciousness it would sometimes leap and pass, without
shape or face. It might slip between two sentences, or it might remain,
a dogging shadow, for an hour. Or a week would go by while, with
a strong hand, she held it out of sight altogether and talked of
Anna--alway