she would still have heard him answer. She could not see him more
clearly now than she had been seeing him through those little wells of
gladness. Her love for him was the whole of her. He came to her with
the opening and the shutting of her eyes; he was the wind that bit her
and the sun that nourished her; he was the lowliest object by the
Cuttle Well, and he was the wings on which her thoughts soared to
eternity. He could never leave her while her mortal frame endured.

When he whispered her name she turned her swimming eyes to him, and a
strange birth had come into her face. Her eyes said so openly they
were his, and her mouth said it was his, her whole being went out to
him; in the radiance of her face could be read immortal designs: the
maid kissing her farewell to innocence was there, and the reason why
it must be, and the fate of the unborn; it was the first stirring for
weal or woe of a movement that has no end on earth, but must roll on,
growing lusty on beauty or dishonour till the crack of time. This
birth which comes to every woman at that hour is God's gift to her in
exchange for what He has taken away, and when He has given it He
stands back and watches the man.

To this man she was a woman transformed. The new bloom upon her face
entranced him. He knew what it meant. He was looking on the face of
love at last, and it was love coming out smiling from its hiding-place
because it thought it had heard him call. The artist in him who had
done this thing was entranced, as if he had written an immortal page.

But the man was appalled. He knew that he had reached the critical
moment in her life and his, and that if he took one step farther
forward he could never again draw back. It would be comparatively easy
to draw back now. To remain a free man he had but to tell her the