Her thoughts ran on. Dimly she felt the peril in her thoughts, running along.... No, Tom was not her child. Tom, no longer. He was like her. It was true. Only, he would not accept. She knew the wilderness of life stretched mountainously far beyond where her feet could bring her. She knew the truth for her in what Tom had said. She had hoped, not for herself, but for him. She had hoped falsely. They were one--they were one. For there was another who was so infinitely more, that they were nothing. And so her mind ran on, while Tom’s eyes searched her. David was not maimed like them. In his eyes was the promise of a new God. And Tom was waging war against that promise. Talk as he would, understand as his mind made him, Tom waged war against that faith in David which he lacked. Strove to snatch it from him: steal it and wear it dead, rather than let David go on alone, with his eyes living. She had said to him: “Do I not help?” With an uncanny closeness, Tom sought in herself the answer. Cornelia turned her eyes away. She could not look at her brother. It was her brother whom she loved. Yet, turning away her eyes, she felt that she was leaving him by a wild wayside, to parch and perish. She felt that even so let it be. All of her must be girded beyond him. He also had said no word. He went to the window and stood there looking out. She knew that both of them had understood.... * * * * * Twelve years before they had set out on a great enterprise together. They had come up from a common childhood which was a common suffering. They had reached Being together. Everything they had was a thing they had shared. The sere soil of the world was a single path they had traveled. Their hands had been joined. Now, facing each other over the communion of their years, they were prepared for war. The bitterest of all was this: that it seemed natural. It was as if their common anguish, the hopes born of their hated home and the fruits they had wrung courageously from their adventure, pointed inevitably to this end. For the most natural of all was this: that the end also should be bitter. The death of their father had brought Tom for the moment closer to Cornelia. He was coming again to see her. There had been months without a sign of him. She knew that when this mood wore out there would be months again. If she had questions of Tom, there was no time to lose. It was bitter hard to bring herself to speak of David. She did not flinch: “How does your friendship stand with him?” she asked him. “It is stormy. It will always, I guess, be stormy. But it will always be.”