sun," he said. "Lie down for a moment," and
again he offered her a hand to help her to rise. She shook her head
but took his hand, enclosing it in both of hers with a sort of happy
deliberation, and drew herself up by it, while her eyes, shining like
dark surfaces of some glorious consciousness within, never left his
face. So she stood beside him with her head bowed, still dumb. It was
her supreme moment; life never again brought her anything like it. It
was not that she confessed so much as that she asserted, she made
a glowing thing plain, cried out to him, still standing silent, the
deep-lying meaning of the tangle of their lives. She was shaken by a
pure delight, as if she unclosed her hand to show him a strange jewel
in her palm, hers and his for the looking. The intensity of her
consciousness swept round him and enclosed him, she knew this
profoundly, and had no thought of the insulation he had in his robe. The
instant passed; he stood unmoved definitely enough, yet some vibration
in it reached him, for there was surprise in his involuntary backward
step.

"You must have thought me curiously rude," he said, as if he felt about
for an explanation, "but your letters were only given to me an hour ago.
We have all been in retreat, you know."

"In RETREAT!" Hilda exclaimed. "Ah, yes. How foolish I have been! In
retreat," she repeated softly, flicking a trace of dust from his sleeve.
"Of course."

"It was held in St. Paul's College," Stephen went on, "by Father Neede.
Shall we sit down? And of course at such times no communications reach
us, no letters or papers."

"No letters or papers," Hilda said, looking at him softly, as it were,
through the film of the words. They sat down, he on the sofa, she on a
chair very near it. There was another placed at a more usual distance,
but she seemed incapable of taking the step or two toward it, away from
him.

Stephen gave himself to the grateful sense of her proximity. He had come
to sun himself again in the warmth of her fellowship; he was stirred
by her emphasis of their separation and reunion. "And what, please," he
asked, "have you been doing? Account to me for the time."

"While you have been praying and fasting? Wondering what you were at,
and waiting for you to finish. Waiting," she said, and clasped her knees
with her intent look again, swaying a little to and fro in her content,
as if that which she waited for had already come, full, and very
desirable.

"Have