Chapter 25

During the next few minutes of silence he pulled himself imperceptibly forward, till his elbows rested on his knees, while he peered up into the face of which he could still see nothing but the profile.

"Is he--is he--coming to Stoughton?"

"He's _going_ to Stoughton. He's been there--already."

If there was silence again it was because he dared not frame the words that were on his tongue.

"It isn't--it can't be--?"

Without moving otherwise, she turned her head so that her eyes looked into his obliquely. She nodded. She could utter no more than the briefest syllables. "Yes. It is."

His lips were parched, but he still forced himself to speak. "Is that true?--or are you saying it because--because I put up the money?"

She gathered all her strength together. "If you hadn't put up the money, I might never have known that it was true; but it _is_ true. I think it was true before that--long ago--when you offered me so much--so _much!_--that I didn't know how to take it--and I didn't answer you. I can't tell. I can't tell when it began--but it seems to me very far back--"

Still bending forward, he covered his eyes with his left hand, raising his right in a blind, groping movement in her direction. She took it in both her own, clasping it to her breast, as she went on:

"I see now--yes, I think I see quite clearly--that that's why I struggled against your help, in the first place.... If it had been anybody else I should probably have taken it at once.... You must have thought me very foolish.... I suppose I was.... My only excuse is that it was something like--like revolt--first against the wrong we had been doing, and then against the great, sublime thing that was coming up out of the darkness to conquer me.... That's the way I felt.... I was afraid.... I wanted something smaller--something more conventional--such as I'd been trained for.... It was only by degrees that I came to see that there were big things to live for--as well as little.... It's all so wonderful!--so mysterious! I can't tell!... I only know that now--"

He withdrew his hand, looking troubled.

"Are you--are you--_sure?_"

She reflected a minute. "I know what makes you ask that. You think I've changed too suddenly. If so, I can explain it."

The silence in which he waited for her to continue assented in some sort to this reading of his thoughts.

"It isn't that I've changed," she said, at last, speaking thoughtfully, "so much as that I've wakened to a sense of what's real for me as distinguished from what's been forced and artificial. You may understand me better if I say that in leading my life up to--up to recently, I've been like a person at a play--a play in which the situations are interesting and the characters sympathetic, but which becomes like a dream the minute you leave the theater and go home. I feel that--that with you--I've--I've got home."

He would have said something, but she hurried on.

"I've not changed toward the play, except to recognize the fact that it _was_ a play--for me. I knew it the instant I began to learn about papa's troubles. That was like a summons to me, like a call. When it came, everything else--the things I'd been taught to strive for and the people whom I had supposed to be the only ones worth living with, grew distant and shadowy, as though they belonged to a picture or a book. It seemed to me that I woke then for the first time to a realization of the life going on about me here in my own country, and to a sense of my share in it. If I hadn't involved myself so much--and involved some one else with me--my duty would have been clearer from the start. But Colonel Ashley's been so noble!--he's understood me so well!--he's helped me so much to understand myself!--that I can't help honoring him, honoring him with my whole heart, even if I see now that I don't--that I never did--care for him in the way--"

She pressed her handkerchief to her lips to keep back what might have become a sob.

"Did you know I--I loved you?" he asked, still speaking hoarsely.

"I thought you must," she said, simply. "I used to say I hoped you didn't--but deep down in my heart--"

He got up and strode to the window, where, with his back to her, he stared awhile at the last cold glimmer of the sun set. His big frame and broad shoulders shut out the light to such an extent that when he turned it was toward a darkened room. He could barely see her, as she sat sidewise to the desk, an arm along the back of her chair. His attitude bespoke a doubt in his mind that still kept him at a distance.

"You're not--you're _not_--saying all this," he pleaded, "because you think I've done anything that calls for a reward? I said once that I should never take anything from you, and I never shall--unless it's something you give only because you can't help it."

Her answer was quite prompt. "I'm not giving anything--or doing anything. What has happened seems to me to have come about simply and naturally, like the sunrise or the seasons, because it's the fullness of time and what God means. I can't say more about it than that. If it depended on my own volition I shouldn't be able to speak of it so frankly. But now--if you want me--as you wanted me once--"

She rose and stood by her chair, holding herself proudly and yet with a certain meekness. With his hands clasped behind him, as though even yet he dared not touch her, he crossed the twilit room toward her.

* * * * *

Late that night Henry Guion stood on the terrace below the Corinthian-columned portico. There was no moon, but the stars had the gold fire with which they shine when the sky is violet. Above the horizon a shimmering halo marked the cluster of cities and towns. In the immediate foreground the great elm was leafless now, but for that reason more clearly etched against the starlight--line on line, curve on curve, sweeping, drooping, interlaced. Guion stood with head up and figure erect, as if from strength given back to him. Even through the darkness he displayed some of the self-assurance and stoutness of heart of the man with whom things are going well. He was remembering--questioning--doubting.

"I had come to the end of the end ... and I prayed ... yes, I _prayed_.... I asked for a miracle ... and the next day it seemed to have been worked.... Was it the prayer that did it?... Was it any one's prayer?... Was it any one's faith?... Was it--God?... Had faith and prayer and God anything to do with it?... Do things happen by coincidence and chance?... or is there a Mind that directs them?... I wonder!... I wonder!..."

THE END

End of Project Gutenberg's The Street Called Straight, by Basil King