did. He thought that she spoke but of the past, she knew that she was

already bracing him for the future. And his smile assured her. And gently, cunningly, she continued to build out of the past.

“Oh, Hughie,” she said, “it was the funniest scene--dear old Sir Thomas told me, and then we called Peggy in, and I said, ‘Oh, Peggy, I’ve got consumption.’ And then I burst out laughing, and Peggy laughed too. We sat and roared.”

Hugh frowned at this.

“Peggy knew?” he asked. “She lied to me, then; that is what it comes to. She told me that she laughed when you told her what Sir Thomas said was the matter with you, so that I might think it was nothing.”

“Yes, dear,” said Edith, “she had already promised not to interfere. If she had--well, not equivocated to you, she would have lied to me. It was very awkward for her, but she did her best. It was a conspiracy----”

“Directed against me.”

“Yes, darling; directed against you. I have already asked your forgiveness, you know.”

Hugh looked round the room with mute, appealing eyes.

“Is it real?” he asked. “Is this horror real?”

Edith said nothing. He was not facing it yet with his best self; Hugh had better than that to give. She knew it would come, for it was there. And the infinite pity of love waited for it. When it came it would prove to have been worth waiting for. Soon he would speak words which came from her own heart. He would say what _she_ felt, and more, what she sought to feel. There was more in Hugh than was, so to speak, accessible, unlocked in her own soul. The love-key would open it. All the wordless sensations, impressions, strivings, of this week when she had been alone with her secret knowledge were in him. The winter sun of the comfort she could bring to him would be blinded by a brighter light. It was he who was going to unveil it. Often and often, so she almost hoped, in the weeks and months that lay before them, she would have to light his candle of patience and hope. But all the time his sun would light her path.

But at this moment poor Hugh wanted his candle.

“What did he--what did Sir Thomas tell you?” he asked brokenly.

“That I had an excellent chance. That I was the sort of person who got well. That I was going to get well. That when I got well, I should be younger and better than now. I liked that, Hugh. We shall be more of an age, so they say.”

“Oh, that silly joke,” said he.

“Yes, it will be knocked on the head, and I shall put cold-cream on your venerable nose and give you your gruel, and then go downstairs again to play with the children, when I have tucked you up in bed and shut the window for fear you should catch cold. It will be fun.”

“Don’t, don’t,” said Hugh.

But she was comforting him.

“That will not be in the immediate future, dear,” she said; “and I want to tell now about the immediate future. Now, don’t gasp. To-morrow I must go to Davos. I have looked out the train already; we go--because you are coming too--we go to a place called Landquart, and up from there. I promised Sir Thomas to do that, Hugh. I have to stop there till I am well; it comes to that, practically.”

Then suddenly Edith found she wanted comfort herself, comfort on the lower level, so to speak, not from the high level.

“Ah, that is dreadful,” she cried; “it may be a year, it may be more, before I see our dear home again, and the down all gray and green above it, and the garden and the water-meadows, and--and Mrs. Owen,” she added, comforting herself by that eternal comforter of humour. But she slipped out of its hands again.

“Oh, Hughie,” she said, giving way to the pathos of little things, which are so big, “I love our home so; it was all so dear and pleasant and cheery. And you sang your exercises in our room, and I added up books in another, and the gales bugled outside. Or it was summer, and the miracle of motherhood came to me. And afterward you and Daisy and Jim, all you children, dressed up, and--and we played Tom Tiddler’s Ground, and Jim caught me, and there was blood on my handkerchief. That is all over.”

Though here it was the lower level of comfort that she required, it was something of the high level that met her. Swift as a spurred horse, Hugh answered to this.

“Over? What are you thinking of?” he said. “Nothing is over. Why, it is just because we have lived those divine days that they are not over. They are here; we have them now. They make us. We won’t look back; there is no need, for all that you say is past is present, bone of our bone, and the flesh on it. You know that. ‘Days that are no more,’ as that silly poem says. There are no days that are no more, except the days we don’t remember. All we remember and rejoice in are the days that have been and are, the days that live, and the things that live, the things that get entwined with love, so that the down above Chalkpits and the river and the water-meadows are all here, here with you and me. How can you be so foolish as to think otherwise?”

It was Edith again who was silent. As the angel moved the waters of Bethesda, so some angel, she knew, had moved Hugh’s soul, and the love-key was already turning in the wards of her own locked chambers. Already, in his last words, the door was ajar, a chink of light shone out. Sorrow, compassion, had enlightened him; it was his very weakness that gave him strength.

He sat upright, facing her, and though his mouth still quivered and his eyes were wet, those signs came from another source.

“But you don’t think otherwise!” he said. “It is the past that makes the future for us. It was we who made us love the dear home, and it is we who will make us love Davos, and, if need be, Landquart, just as devotedly. We make the place we live in.”

The door swung wide now.

“And whatever comes, God bless it,” said Hugh. “Oh, soul talks to soul, does it not, now? If I get run over by a train it is all right. If you don’t get better, if you die, it is all right. It must be, because we are lovers, you and I. There is nothing more than that in the world. Why should there be? What could there be? Supposing the world was all a hideous joke, and we little people were just puppets on a stage that meant nothing, what then? We still, you and I now, feel as if it was real. We can’t ask more than that, for there is nothing more to ask. It is real to us. We snap our fingers at cancer, consumption, fever, all that people make statistics about. Who cares? Those things are the unreal things.”

Hugh’s voice dropped suddenly; till now it had been almost song. But now it became husky and dim.

“But the down above the house is real,” he said, “since it was there that you told me of Andrew Robb. And the garden seat is real, because you sat there and cried. And, to be egotistic, the nursery at Cookham is real, because--well, because Daisy wouldn’t go to sleep. Moth and rust cannot corrupt those things. Thieves cannot steal anything that is worth stealing, whatever form the thieves take. They may take many forms, illness, disease. Oh, Edith!”

The inevitable restriction bound the human soul. Reach out as we may toward the infinite, toward what we know is true and real, and indeed concerns us, yet the fact that we are men and women living on this earth and bound bodily by the finite laws of time and space, imposes a similar limitation on the spirit, else it would burst its bonds. And such is the inevitable irony of things, this reaction, this tweak at the rope which binds us to earth, brings about a fall more peremptory and convincing in proportion to the height to which the fluttering soul has soared. And with the cry, “Oh, Edith,” poor Hugh came back to earth with a thump that was unreal perhaps, compared to the realities of which he had just spoken, but was still a terribly good imitation of reality. And as with jugglers some flaming torch is tossed to and fro, never extinguished, but burning ever brighter from its swift passage, so Edith held the light to him now.

“Ah, Hughie,” she said, “you got there, then: you got to the home of our souls. You showed me beautiful things. But it can’t always be equally real to us. There must come discouraging times, times when our patience burns dim, and even hope perhaps burns dim. And it is then, dear, that you will help us both so much just by being yourself, by laughing, by talking nonsense, by being young and foolish. Promise me that you will keep that up.”

The great, grave supreme moment she knew had passed: Hugh had soared up to give to this dreadful blow that had come upon him and her the welcome which was worthiest of him, and she was wise to remind him, though indeed he knew it, that it was impossible to expect that he could remain always in those high places. Reaction, despondency, even despair, was sure to come to them, and the full realisation of things as he had seen them then was not always at hand: the open vision could not stand open always. But the brave little weapons of every day were there.

She looked at him gravely.

“Promise me that,” she repeated.

“I will do my best,” he said.

“And that is very good, dear. Why, Hughie, it is nearly two! I must go to bed at once, and so must you.”

But she still held his hands in hers.

“Thank you, my darling, for Tristan to-night,” she said, “and thank you for the huge success you made of my little treat. Thank you for love, dear, and your courage, and--and all that you are to me, which no tongue can tell.”

She paused a moment.

“It has been perfect,” she said.