Morrison made no reply, and presently Clowes went upstairs to bed, leaving her with her hair drooping over her face, staring into the glowing fire. "I must learn my lesson," said Morrison to herself. "I must learn my lesson." She was so little trained for misery, but this was misery enough. But she sat and brooded over it, and summoned up all her strength for the supreme effort of her will, not to be broken and cast down in the swing back from love. She had taught him to surrender himself to love; she must learn to surrender herself to misery, to swing as high on one side as on the other. For many, many hours she wrestled with herself and broke down fear after fear, weakness after weakness, until she was utterly exposed to the enemies of love and knew that she could be with Mendel through everything. She took out from her paint-box his letter describing the scene in the hospital, which had shocked and horrified her before, and now read and re-read it until she had lived through all the story and could understand both Logan and Oliver. At last, when she could endure no more, relief came, a new vision of love, no longer lost in the woods or in any earthly beauty, but a clear light illuminating men and women and the earth upon which they dwell. And in her soul, too, the upward impulse began to thrill, and with a sob of thankfulness she lay on her bed fully clothed and went to sleep. * * * * * She was not at all disturbed when Mendel said in the morning that he must go back to London to work on his picture. It was right. Their happiness was too tremulous. There was plenty of time for them to take up their ordinary jolly human lives, plenty of time now that they were no longer young. She walked with him to the station, and on the way they laughed and sang, and he whistled and talked breathlessly about his picture. "My mother says a cock robin can never mate with a sparrow," he said. "I promised I would take you to see her." "I should love to come, for I love your mother." "I would like you to see the Jews as they are," he said, "so simply serving God that their souls have gone to sleep." As they stood on the platform she said:-- "Mendel, I did . . . begin to understand last night, and it has made you and your work more important than anything else in my life." He gripped her fiercely by the arm. "Come to London, now," he said. "Not now." "Soon." "Very soon." He got into the train, and as it carried him off she could not bear him to go, and, forgetting all the other people, she ran as hard as she could along the platform, and stood at its extremity until the train disappeared round the corner of the embankment, and even then she called after him:-- "Mendel! Mendel!" _Transcriber's Note_ This transcription is based on the British edition published by T. Fisher Unwin in 1916. Scans of this edition are available through the Hathi Trust Digital Library at: http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100597585