at undermined all the fairness of her logic, and even
triumphed over the sword of her suspense. She never quite gave up the
struggle, but in effect she passed the week that intervened pinioned in
her unreason--bands that vanished as she looked at them, only to tie her
thrice in another place.

Life became a permanent interrogation-point. Waiting under it, with a
perpetual upward gaze, perhaps she grew a little dizzy. The sun of March
had been increasing, and the air that Saturday afternoon had begun to
melt and glow and hang in the streets with a kind of inertia, like a
curtain that had to be parted to be penetrated. Hilda came into the
house and faced the stairs with an inclination to leave her body on the
ground floor and mount in spirit only. When she glanced in at the
drawing-room door and saw Arnold sitting under the blue umbrellas, a
little paler, a thought more serene than usual, she swept into the room
as if a tide carried her, and sank down upon a foot-stool close to him,
as if it had dropped her there. He had risen at her appearance. He was
all himself but rather more the priest; his face of greeting had exactly
its usual asking intelligence, but to her the fact that he was normal
was lost in the fact that he was near. He held out his hand, but she
only sought his face speechless, hugging her knees.

"You are overcome by the sun," he said. "Lie down for a moment," and
again he offered her a hand to help her to rise. She shook her head but
took his hand, enclosing it in both of hers with a sort of happy
deliberation, and drew herself up by it, while her eyes, shining like
dark surfaces of some glorious consciousness within, never left his
face. So she stood beside him with her head bowed, still dumb. It was
her supreme moment; life never again brought her anything like it. It
was not that she confessed so much as that she asserted, she made a
glowing thing plain, cried out to him, still standing silent, the
deep-lying meaning of the tangle of their lives. She was shaken by a
pure delight, as if she unclosed her hand to show him a strange jewel in
her palm, hers and his for the looking. The intensity of her
consciousness swept round him and enclosed him, she knew this
profoundly, and had no thought of the insulation he had in his robe. The
instant passed; he stood outside it definitely enough, yet some
vibration in it touched him, for there was surprise in his involuntary
backward step.

"You must have though