d had gazed,
instantly, as though the gates of heaven had rolled back for him, into
her face. She was kneeling on the floor, one hand was behind his head,
the other bathed his forehead. He could see her breasts (so little, so
gentle) rise and fall beneath her thin dress, and her great dark eyes
caught his soul and held it.

In that one great moment God withdrew. For the first time in his
knowledge of her they were alone, and in the kiss that he gave to her
when he drew her down to him they met for the first time. Death and the
anger of God might come to him--that great moment could never be taken
from him. It was his. . . .

He had seen that she was gravely distressed with his fainting, and he
had been able to give her no reason beyond the heat of the room. He
could see that she was puzzled and felt that there was some mystery
there that she was not to know, but she too had found in that last kiss
a glorious certainty that no other hazard could possibly destroy.

He loved her--she loved him. Let the Gods thunder!

But he knew, nevertheless, as he lay back there in the chair, that he
had received a sign. That primrose path with Margaret was not to be
allowed him, and so sure was he that now he could lie back and look at
it all as though he were a spectator and wonder in what way God
intended to work it out. The other side of him--the fighting, battling
creature--was, for the moment, dormant. Soon Bunning would come in
and then the fight would begin again, but for the instant there was
peace--the first peace that he had known since that far-away evening in
St. Martin's Chapel.

As with a drowning man (it is said) so now with Olva his past life
stretched, in panorama, before him. He saw the high rocky grey building
with its rough shape and shaggy lichen, its neglected courtyard, its
iron-barred windows, the gaunt trees, like witches, that hemmed it, the
white ribbon of road, far, far below it, the shining gleam of the river
hidden by purple hills. He saw his father--huge, flowing grey beard,
eyebrows stuck, like leeches, on to his weather-beaten face, his gnarled
and knotted hands. He saw himself a tiny boy with thin black hair and
grave eyes watching his father as he bathed in the mill-pool below the
house--his father rising naked from the stream, hung with the mists of
early morning, naked with enormous chest, huge flanks, his beard black
then and sweeping across his breast, his great thighs shining with the
drippi