“I have thought of that--I might have made it easier. I have thought of that,” she repeated. “And yet--we were so tired. We seemed to need to be ourselves. It has been beautiful--to be ourselves----” It seemed to him that she came nearer, but that was impossible for the child was between.... Just then his mind finished the other picture--of her arms held up to the hawthorn buds--a babe of his own in those arms! He would have fought to prevent its coming, but it visualised of itself. Had it been that which enchanted the woodland?... He was silent. She had become even more to him for this instant. He would not call it other than beautiful, now that it had come. She was more than ever the heart of mystery--the Quest. She knew all these things--love and maternity she knew; even the passionate fluting of Pan had quickened her eyes; and where she abode, there was the genius of Home. So slowly had it come--perhaps this was not all. For weeks he had stood by--day after day, the heart of her becoming more spacious and eloquent; one miracle of the woman after another--finally, to-night the mystery of all life about her, for his eyes. Yet to her it was no mystery; she was _of it_, rhythmically so. She knew the dream--and the life that comes at last to quicken it. She could love; she could live; she could wait. She loved God--but loved Nature, too. She was spirit, but flesh, too. She was powerful in two worlds.... So Bellair stood with bowed head, and though Bessie was forgotten, Fleury was not. It was still with him that Fleury and the Faraway Woman were fashioned for each other.... “She may be so wonderful to me, because she trusts me to understand----” such was the essence of his fear. It kept his heart dumb.... That night she brought a pitcher of water and placed it upon the hearth, looked up and found him watching. “For the fairies,” she said. * * * * * That changed him a little, brought her nearer to words of his; though the effort to speak was like lifting a bridge. She was leaving for her room when he managed: “Day after to-morrow--the steamer. May we not talk to-night?” He saw her stop. Then she was coming toward him so gladly. “Yes--you want the rest of the story?” “Yes.... I have been sorry that _he_ couldn’t hear it----” She stood before him, tall and white. “I think you are like me,” she said in a moment. “I think you have something behind you that you do not tell--something that made you what you are--yet greater than you seem to yourself.... I would have told you while _he_ was with us, but you know how the days passed and we could not hold our thoughts together. Then there were times when we could not even use our voices.... Do you know that the world is wonderful--that the thousands about us do not even dream how wonderful it is--how tremendous even miseries are? Sometimes I think that the tragedies we meet are our greatest hours.”