"Advena," he whispered, out of the sudden clamour in his
mind, "she can't be--she isn't--nothing has happened to
her?"
She smiled faintly, but her eyes were again full of fear
at his implication of the only way.
"Oh, no!" she said. "But you have been away, and she has
come. I have seen her; and oh! she won't care, Hugh--she
won't care."
Her asking, straining face seemed to gather and reflect
all the light there was in the shifting night about them.
The rain had stopped, but the wind still hurtled past,
whirling the leaves from one darkness to another. They
were as isolated, as outlawed there in the wild wet wind
as they were in the confusion of their own souls.
"We must care," he said helplessly, clinging to the sound
and form of the words.
"Oh, no!" she cried. "No, no! Indeed I know now what is
possible and what is not!"
For an instant her eyes searched the rigid lines of his
face in astonishment. In their struggle to establish the
impossible she had been so far ahead, so greatly the more
confident and daring, had tempted him to such heights,
scorning every dizzy verge, that now, when she turned
quite back from their adventure, humbly confessing it
too hard, she could not understand how he should continue
to set himself doggedly toward it. Perhaps, too, she
trusted unconsciously in her prerogative.
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