e experienced a shock as though he had been
called out of a trance by the sudden noise of an explosion. It was even
more startling and more distinct; it was an infinitely more intimate
change, for he had the sensation of having come into this room only that
very moment; of having returned from very far; he was made aware that
some essential part of himself had in a flash returned into his
body, returned finally from a fierce and lamentable region, from the
dwelling-place of unveiled hearts. He woke up to an amazing infinity of
contempt, to a droll bitterness of wonder, to a disenchanted conviction
of safety. He had a glimpse of the irresistible force, and he saw also
the barrenness of his convictions--of her convictions. It seemed to him
that he could never make a mistake as long as he lived. It was morally
impossible to go wrong. He was not elated by that certitude; he was
dimly uneasy about its price; there was a chill as of death in this
triumph of sound principles, in this victory snatched under the very
shadow of disaster.

The last trace of his previous state of mind vanished, as the
instantaneous and elusive trail of a bursting meteor vanishes on the
profound blackness of the sky; it was the faint flicker of a painful
thought, gone as soon as perceived, that nothing but her presence--after
all--had the power to recall him to himself. He stared at her. She sat
with her hands on her lap, looking down; and he noticed that her boots
were dirty, her skirts wet and splashed, as though she had been driven
back there by a blind fear through a waste of mud. He was indignant,
amazed and shocked, but in a natural, healthy way now; so that he
could control those unprofitable sentiments by the dictates of cautious
self-restraint. The light in the room had no unusual brilliance now; it
was a good light in which he could easily observe the expression of her
face. It was that of dull fatigue. And the silence that surrounded them
was the normal silence of any quiet house, hardly disturbed by the faint
noises of a respectable quarter of the town. He was very cool--and it
was quite coolly that he thought how much better it would be if neither
of them ever spoke again. She sat with closed lips, with an air of
lassitude in the stony forgetfulness of her pose, but after a moment she
lifted her drooping eyelids and met his tense and inquisitive stare by
a look that had all the formless eloquence of a cry. It penetrated, it
stirred with