It all flowed into big new impetus for her work. A year before she had wanted to work because she was so happy, now with a fierce passion she turned to her work as the thing to make it right for their lives. Out of all this she would rise to so great an understanding, so supreme a power that they too could hurl their defiant--"Well?"--at the fate which had believed them conquered. In the glow and the passion and the exaltation of it she felt that nothing in the world, no trick of fate, no onslaught of God or man, could keep her from the work that was hers. She had a vision of hosts of men, all powers of fate, marching against her, and she, unfaltering, serene, confident, just doing her work! It was one of the perfect moments of the divine intoxication. It was in the very glow of it that the strange thing happened. The lights from her ruby, caught in a shaft of light, blurred her vision for an instant, and in that same instant, as if borne with the lights of the stone, there penetrated her glowing, exuberant mood--quick, piercing, like an arrow shot in with strong, true hand--"He loves his work just like this. You know now. You understand." Her mood fell away like a pricked bubble. The divine glow, that passionate throbbing of conscious power, made way for the comprehension of that thing shot in upon her like a shaft.--"He loves his work just like this. You know now. You understand." She had been standing, and she sank to a chair. Like all great changes it sapped up strength. The blood had cooled too suddenly, and she was weak and trembling--but, oh, how she understood! He himself did not understand it as she understood it now. Pushing upon him--dominating him--clamouring--crowding for outlet when outlet had been closed--gathering, growing, and unable to find its valve of escape--why it would crowd upon him--kill him! Beat it down? But it was the deathless in him. With human strength put out a fire that was divine? She covered her face with her hands to shut it out. But she could not shut it out; it was there--a thing to be faced, not evaded--a thing which would grow, not draw away. And she loved him so! In this moment of perfect understanding, this divine camaraderie of the soul--knowing that they were touched with the same touch--drew from a common fount--she felt within her a love for him, an understanding, which all of the centuries behind her, the eternity out of which she had come--had gone to make. And then, grim, stern, she put her intellect upon it. She went over everything he had said that afternoon. Each thought of it opened up new channels, and she followed them all to their uttermost. And in that getting of it in hand there was more than insight, knowledge, conviction. There was a complete sensing of the truth, a comprehending of things just without the pale of reason.