Again came the long sigh behind her; and a moment afterwards there was a step upon the floor, and Laurie himself stood by her. She glanced at him sideways, wondering for an instant whether his mood was as hers; and his grave, tired, boyish face was answer enough. He met her eyes, and then again let his own stray out to the garden. He was the first to speak. "Maggie," he said, "I think we had best never speak of this again to one another." She nodded, but he went on-- "I understand very little. I wish to understand no more. I shall ask no questions, and nothing need be said to anybody. You agree?" "I agree perfectly," she said. "And not a word to my mother, of course." "Of course not." * * * * * The two were silent again. And now reality--or rather, the faculties of memory and consideration by which reality is apprehended--were once more coming back to the girl and beginning to stir in her mind. She began, gently now, and without perturbation, to recall what had passed, the long crescendo of the previous months, the gathering mutter of the spiritual storm that had burst last night--even the roar and flare of the storm itself, and the mad instinctive fight for the conscious life and identity of herself through which she had struggled. And it seemed to her as if the storm, like others in the material plane, had washed things clean again, and discharged an oppression of which she had been but half conscious. Neither was it herself alone who had emerged into this "clear shining after rain"; but the boy that stood by her seemed to her to share in her joy. They stood here together now in a spiritual garden, of which this lovely morning was no more than a clumsy translation into another tongue. There stirred an air about them which was as wine to the soul, a coolness and clearness that was beyond thought, in a radiance that shone through all that was bathed within it, as sunlight that filtered through water. She perceived then that the experience had been an initiation for them both, that here they stood, one by the other, each transparent to the other, or, at least, he transparent to her; and she wondered, not whether he would see it as she did, for of that she was confident, but when. For this space of silence she perceived him through and through, and understood that perception was everything. She saw the flaws in him as plainly as in herself, the cracks in the crystal; yet these did not matter, for the crystal was crystal.... So she waited, confident, until he should understand it too. "But that is only one fraction of what is in my mind--" He broke off. Then for the first time since she had opened her eyes just now her heart began to beat. That which had lain hidden for so long--that which she had crushed down under stone and seal and bidden lie still--yet that which had held her resolute, all unknown to herself, through the night that was gone--once more asserted itself and waited for liberation.