Exhaustion caught me, and I sank back among my cushions. But Marion rose up suddenly and stood beside me. And as she did so, another Sky dropped softly down upon us both, and I smelt again the incense of old, old gardens that brought long-forgotten perfumes, incredibly sweet, but with it an ache of far-off, passionate remembrance that was pain. This great ache of distance swept over me like a wave. I know not what grand change then was wrought upon her beauty, so that I saw her defiant and erect, commanding Fate because she understood it. She towered over me, but it was her soul that towered. The rush of internal darkness in me blotted out all else. The familiar, present sky grew dim, the sunshine faded, the lake and flowers and poplars dipped away. Conditions a thousand times more vivid took their place. She stood out, clear and shining in the glory of an undressed soul, brave and confident with an eternal love that separation strengthened but could never, never change. The deep sadness I abruptly realised, was very little removed from joy--because, somehow, it was the condition of joy. I could not explain it more than that. And her voice, when she spoke, was firm with a note of steel in it; intense, yet devoid of the wasting anger that passion brings. She was determined beyond Death itself, upon a foundation sure and lasting as the stars. The heart in her was calm, because she _knew_. She was magnificent. ‘We are together--always,’ she said, her voice rich with the knowledge of some unfathomable experience, ‘for separation is temporary merely, forging new links in the ancient chain of lives that binds our hearts eternally together.’ She looked like one who has conquered the adversity Time brings, by accepting it. ‘You speak of the Present as though our souls were already fitted now to bid it stay, needing no further fashioning. Looking only to the Future, you forget our ample Past that has made us what we are. Yet our Past is here and now, beside us at this very moment. Into the hollow cups of weeks and months, of years and centuries, Time pours its flood beneath our eyes. Time is our schoolroom.... Are you so soon afraid? Does not separation achieve that which companionship never could accomplish? And how shall we dare eternity together if we cannot be strong in separation first?’ I listened while a flood of memories broke up through film upon film and layer upon layer that had long covered them. ‘This Present that we seem to hold between our hands,’ she went on in that earnest, distant voice, ‘_is_ our moment of sweet remembrance that you speak of, of renewal, perhaps, too, of reconciliation--a fleeting instant when we may kiss again and say good-bye, but with strengthened hope and courage revived. But we may not stay together finally--we _cannot_--until long discipline and pain shall have perfected sympathy and schooled our love by searching, difficult tests, that it may last for ever.’