aked
shadow of it had come between them. For that second, while he spoke, it
seemed possible that, in the middle of welter and chaos and death and
enmity, these two souls could stand apart, in the passionate serene of
love, and the moment lasted for just as long as she flung herself into
his arms. And then, even while her face was pressed to his, and while
the riotous blood of their pressed lips sang to them, the shadow fell
across them. Even as he asserted the inviolability of the sanctuary in
which they stood, he knew it to be an impossible Utopia--that he should
find with her the peace that should secure them from the raging storm,
the cold shadow--and the loosening of her arms about his neck but
endorsed the message of his own heart. For such heavenly security cannot
come except to those who have been through the ultimate bitterness that
the world can bring; it is not arrived at but through complete surrender
to the trial of fire, and as yet, in spite of their opposed patriotism,
in spite of her sincerest sympathy with Michael's loss, the assault
on the most intimate lines of the fortress had not yet been delivered.
Before they could reach the peace that passed understanding, a fiercer
attack had to be repulsed, they had to stand and look at each other
unembittered across waves and billows of a salter Marah than this.

But still they clung, while in their eyes there passed backwards and
forwards the message that said, "It is not yet; it is not thus!" They
had been like two children springing together at the report of some
thunder-clap, not knowing in the presence of what elemental outpouring
of force they hid their faces together. As yet it but boomed on the
horizon, though messages of its havoc reached them, and the test would
come when it roared and lightened overhead. Already the tension of the
approaching tempest had so wrought on them that for a month past they
had been unreal to each other, wanting ease, wanting confidence; and
now, when the first real shock had come, though for a moment it threw
them into each other's arms, this was not, as they knew, the real, the
final reconciliation, the touchstone that proved the gold. Francis's
death, the cousin whom Michael loved, at the hands of one of the nation
to whom Sylvia belonged, had momentarily made them feel that all else
but their love was but external circumstance; and, even in the moment
of their feeling this, the shadow fell again, and left them chilly and