into this
"clear shining after rain"; but the boy that stood by her seemed to
her to share in her joy. They stood here together now in a spiritual
garden, of which this lovely morning was no more than a clumsy
translation into another tongue. There stirred an air about them which
was as wine to the soul, a coolness and clearness that was beyond
thought, in a radiance that shone through all that was bathed within
it, as sunlight that filtered through water. She perceived then that
the experience had been an initiation for them both, that here they
stood, one by the other, each transparent to the other, or, at least,
he transparent to her; and she wondered, not whether he would see it
as she did, for of that she was confident, but when. For this space of
silence she perceived him through and through, and understood that
perception was everything. She saw the flaws in him as plainly as in
herself, the cracks in the crystal; yet these did not matter, for the
crystal was crystal....
So she waited, confident, until he should understand it too.
"But that is only one fraction of what is in my mind--" He broke off.
Then for the first time since she had opened her eyes just now her
heart began to beat. That which had lain hidden for so long--that
which she had crushed down under stone and seal and bidden lie
still--yet that which had held her resolute, all unknown to herself,
through the night that was gone--once more asserted itself and waited
for liberation.
"Yet how dare I--" began Laurie.
Again she glanced at him, terrified lest that which was in her heart
should declare itself too plainly by eyes and lips; and she saw how he
still looked across the garden, yet seeing nothing but his own thought
written there against the glory of sky and leaf and grass. His face
caught the splendor from the east, and she saw in it the lines that
would tell always of the anguish through which he was come; and again
the terror in her heart leapt to the other side, in spite of her
confidence, and bade her fear lest through some mistake, some
conventional shame, he should say no more.
Then he turned his troubled eyes and looked her in the face, and as he
looked the trouble cleared.
"Why--Maggie!" he said.
_Epilogue_
"The worst of it all is," said Maggie, four months later, to a very
patient female friend who adored her, and was her _confidante_ just
then--"the worst of it is that I'm not in the least sure of what it
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