For a second they looked straight at each other without speaking. Neither was conscious of any clear thought, but both knew that in that breathing space they had exchanged a signal from those hidden chambers which men unlock only in brief moments of silent crisis. The crisis had come in spite of a year's defiant struggle. It had broken down the barrier of trivial commonplaces behind which they had always sought shelter; it had rushed over them in a flash, like a sudden tidal wave, scorning their painfully erected defenses, driving them helplessly before it. It had no apparent cause, save that in that moment of alarm she had looked at him with her soul unguarded, and he, overwhelmed by that silent revelation, had allowed his own sternly repressed secret to flash back its breathless message. Nicholson was the first to regain his self-control. He bent down and, picking up her work, restored it gently to her hands. "You must go on with your sewing," he said. "I like seeing you work. It completes the picture of a--home--" "Yes," she interrupted, in a rough, broken voice. "It is a perfect picture, is it not? Just so, as it is--only, of course--" she laughed as he had never heard her laugh before--"of course it's only a tableau--it isn't real." Once more her head was bent over her work. He saw how with every stitch she was fighting stubbornly for calm--fighting with all the dogged desperation of a high-minded woman who sees herself trembling at the edge of a bottomless abyss. He knew now for certain that her apparent happiness was a sham and an heroic lie--that she knew what he knew of Travers' outside life, and suffered with the intensity which honor must suffer when linked with dishonor. He saw, with a soldier's instinctive admiration, that she was holding her ground against the fierce and unexpected attack of an overwhelming enemy, and that he, who had his own battle to fight, must hold out to her a helping, strengthening comrade's hand. "Lois!" he said quietly. "Lois!" She went on working. The name had been a test of her strength, and she had borne it. He knew that he could go on with what he had to say. "Lois, we had our young enthusiasms in those old days--crazes, we will call them--and of course, like all young enthusiasms, they are gone for ever. But there were other things. Sometimes we used to talk very seriously about life, do you remember? I dare say we talked nonsense for the greater part--we were very young--but we were intensely serious. We told each other what we thought life was, and what we intended to make of it. It was then we had the idea of the cathedral." She looked up earnestly at him. "The cathedral? Haven't you forgotten?" "No. I never forgot it."