ebbed--they were conscious of every
subsiding throb--a silence came instead, like a margin for the beauty of
it. After a time the woman spoke. "Once before," she began, but he put
up his hand and she stopped. Then, as if she would no longer be
restrained, "That is all I want," she whispered. "That is enough."

For a time they said very little, looking back upon their divine moment;
the shadows gathered in the corners of the room and made quiet
conversation which was almost audible in the pauses. Then Hilda began to
speak, steadily, calmly. You, too, would have forgotten her folly in
what she found to say, as Arnold did; you, too, would have drawn faith
and courage from her face. One would not be irreverent, but if this
woman were convicted of the unforgivable sin she could explain it and
obtain justification rather than pardon.

"Then I may stay?" she said at the end.

"I am satisfied--if a way can be found."

"I will find a way," she replied.

After which he went back through the city streets to his disciples in
new humility and profounder joy, knowing that virtue had gone out of
him. She in her room where she lodged also considered the miracle, twice
wonderful in that it asked no faith of her.

CHAPTER XXI.

It is difficult to be precise about such a thing, but I should think
that Hilda gave herself to the marvellous aspect of what had come and
gone between them for several hours after Arnold left her. It was not
for some time, at all events, that she arrived at the consideration--the
process was naturally downward--that the soul of the marvel lay in the
exact moment of its happening. Nothing could have been more heaven-sent
than her precious perception, exactly then, that before the shining gift
of Arnold's spiritual sympathy, all her desire for a lesser thing from
him must creep away abashed for ever. Even when the lesser thing, by
infinitely gradual expansion, again became the greater, it remained
permanently leavened and lifted in her by the strange and lovely
incident that had taken, for the moment, such command of her and of him.
She would not question it or reason about it, perhaps with an instinct
to avert its destruction; she simply drew it deeply into her content.
Only its sweet deception did not stay with her, and she let that go with
open hands. She wanted, more than ever, the whole of Stephen Arnold, all
that was so openly the Mission's and all that was so evidently God's. It
will be seen