quite sure whether she were going
to accept that gift, whether she would hesitate to take from his profane
hands a thing so sacred and so supreme. He was aware that his fate
somehow hung on her acceptance, and he waited in silence, lest a word
should destroy the work of love in her.

Anne, too (when she could detach her mind from the crucifix), felt that
the moment was decisive. To accept that gift, of all gifts, was to lay
her spirit under obligation to him. It was more than a surrender of body,
heart, or mind. It was to admit him to association with the unspeakably
sacred acts of prayer and adoration.

If it were possible that that had been his desire; if he had meant his
gift as a tribute, not to her only, but to the spirit of holiness in her;
if, in short, he had been serious, then, indeed, she could not hesitate.
For, if it were so, her prayer was answered.

She laid down the crucifix and turned to him. They searched each other
with their eyes. She saw, without wholly understanding, the pain in his.
He saw, also unintelligently, the austerity in hers.

"Are you not going to take it, then?" he said.

"I don't know. Do you realise that you are giving me a very sacred
thing?"

"I do."

"And that I can't treat it as I would an ordinary present?"

He lowered his eyelids. "I didn't think you'd want to wear it in your
hair, dear."

She was about to ask him what he did mean then; but some instinct held
her, told her not to press the sign of grace too hard. She looked at him
still more intently. His eyes had disconcerted and baffled her, but now
she was sheltered by their lowered lids. Then she noticed for the first
time that his face showed the marks of suffering. It was as if it had
dropped suddenly the brilliant mask it wore for her, and given up its
secret unaware. He had suffered so that he had not slept. It was plain to
her in the droop of his eyelids, and in the drawn lines about his eyes
and mouth and nostrils. She was touched with tenderness and pity, and a
certain unintelligible awe. And she knew her hour. She knew that if she
closed her heart now, it would never open to him. She knew that it was
his hour as well as hers. She felt, reverently, that it was, above all,
God's hour.

She laid her hand on her husband's gift, saying to herself that if she
took that crucifix she would be taking him with it into the holy places
of her heart.

"I will take it." Her voice came shy and inarticulate as a marria