he movements of her delicate fingers as they
played with the tangled hyacinth bells. Her hands were wet with the thick
streaming juice of the torn stalks; she stretched them out to him
helplessly. He knelt before her, and spread his handkerchief on his
knees, and took her hands and wiped them. She let them rest in his for a
moment, and, with a low, panting cry, he bowed his head and covered them
with kisses.

At his cry her lips parted. And as her soul had called to him across the
spiritual ramparts, so her eyes said to him: "Come"; and he knew that
with all her body and her soul she yearned to him and consented.

He held her tight by the wrists and drew her to him; and she laid her
arms lightly on his neck and kissed him.

"I'm glad now," she whispered, "that Edith didn't tell me. She knew you.
Oh, my dear, she knew."

And to herself she said proudly: "It rests with me."

BOOK II

CHAPTER XI

It was October, five months after Anne's birthday. She was not to know
again the mood which determined her complete surrender. Supreme moods can
never be recaptured or repeated. The passion that inspires them is
unique, self-sacrificial, immortal only through fruition; doomed to pass
and perish in its exaltation. She would know tenderness, but never just
that tenderness; gladness, but never that gladness; peace, but never the
peace that possessed her in the woods at Westleydale.

The new soul in her moved steadily, to a rhythm which lacked the diviner
thrill of the impulse which had given it birth. It was but seldom that
the moment revived in memory. If Anne had accounted to herself for that
day, she would have said that they had taken the nine-fifty train to
Westleydale, that they had had a nice luncheon, that the weather was
exceptionally fine, and that well, yes, certainly, that day had been the
beginning of their entirely satisfactory relations. Anne's mind had a
tendency to lapse into the commonplace when not greatly stirred. Happily
for her, she had a refuge from it in her communion with the Unseen.

Only at times was she conscious of a certain foiled expectancy. For the
greater while it seemed to her that she had attained an indestructible
spiritual content.

She conceived a profound affection for her home. The house in Prior
Street became the centre of her earthward thoughts, and she seldom left
it for very long. Her health remained magnificent; her nature being
adapted to an undisturbed routine,