the Incarnation was, as it were, worked for her in her own soul; when she
heard in her own heart the beating of the heart of God; when his hand
touched her with a tenderness that warmed her place of peace. She had
hardly known this flamed and lyric creature for herself. It was as if her
soul, resting after long flight, had contemplated for the first time the
silver and fine gold of her wings.

It was the facility of the revelation that had first caused her to
suspect it. And she had thrown ashes on the flame, and set a watch upon
her soul, lest she should mistake an earthly for a heavenly content. She
could not bear to think that she was cheated, that her pulses counted in
her sense of exaltation and beatitude. She desired, purely, the utmost
purity in that divine communion, so as to be sure that it was divine.

Now, having suffered, she was completely sure. Her wound was the seal God
set upon her soul. It was easy enough now for her to achieve detachment,
oblivion of Walter Majendie, to pour out her whole soul in the prayer for
light: "Lighten our darkness, we beseech Thee, O Lord, and by Thy great
mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night."

Her hands, as she prayed, were folded close over her eyes. Having
annihilated her husband, she was disagreeably astonished to find that he
was there, that he had been there for some time, in the seat beside her.

He was sitting in what he took to be an attitude of extreme reverence,
his head bowed and resting on his left arm, which was supported by the
back of the seat in front of him. His right arm embraced, unconsciously,
Anne's muff. Anne was vividly, painfully aware of him. Over the crook of
his elbow one eye looked up at her, bright, smiling with inextinguishable
affection. His lips gave out a sound that was not a prayer, but something