that overwhelmed
and immortalised; it had only the stamp of the common doom. But poor
Marcher at this hour judged the common doom sufficient. It would serve
his turn, and even as the consummation of infinite waiting he would bend
his pride to accept it. He sat down on a bench in the twilight. He
hadn't been a fool. Something had _been_, as she had said, to come.
Before he rose indeed it had quite struck him that the final fact really
matched with the long avenue through which he had had to reach it. As
sharing his suspense and as giving herself all, giving her life, to bring
it to an end, she had come with him every step of the way. He had lived
by her aid, and to leave her behind would be cruelly, damnably to miss
her. What could be more overwhelming than that?

Well, he was to know within the week, for though she kept him a while at
bay, left him restless and wretched during a series of days on each of
which he asked about her only again to have to turn away, she ended his
trial by receiving him where she had always received him. Yet she had
been brought out at some hazard into the presence of so many of the
things that were, consciously, vainly, half their past, and there was
scant service left in the gentleness of her mere desire, all too visible,
to check his obsession and wind up his long trouble. That was clearly
what she wanted; the one thing more for her own peace while she could
still put out her hand. He was so affected by her state that, once
seated by her chair, he was moved to let everything go; it was she
herself therefore who brought him back, took up again, before she
dismissed him, her last word of the other time. She showed how she
wished to leave their business in order. "I'm not sure you understood.
You've nothing to wait for more. It _has_ come."

Oh how he looked at her! "Really?"

"Really."

"The thing that, as you said, _was_ to?"

"The thing that we began in our youth to watch for."

Face to face with her once more he believed her; it was a claim to which
he had so abjectly little to oppose. "You mean that it has come as a
positive definite occurrence, with a name and a date?"

"Positive. Definite. I don't know about the 'name,' but, oh with a
date!"

He found himself again too helplessly at sea. "But come in the
night--come and passed me by?"

May Bartram had her strange faint smile. "Oh no, it hasn't passed you
by!"

"But if I haven't been aware of it and it h