She tried to speak, and could not. He
came to kneel down by her and took her in his arms.
"Did you think I had sold myself to the devil last time I was here?"
"I was so harsh!--forgive ..." she said brokenly.
"No. You called things by their right names."
There was silence till he murmured:
"Isn't it strange? I had quite given up prayer--till these last weeks. To
pray for any definite physical or material thing would seem to me now--as
it always has done--absurd. But to reach out--to the Power beyond our
weakness!"
He paused a moment and resumed:
"Boden did that for me. He came to me--at the worst. He never preached to
me. He has his black times--like the rest of us. But something upholds
him--and--oh! so strangely--I don't think he knew--through him--I too
laid hold. But for that--I might have put an end to myself--more than
once--these last weeks."
She clung to him--whispering:
"Neither of us--can ever suffer--again--without the other--to help."
They kissed once more, love and youth welling up in them, and drowning
out of sight, for the moment at least, the shapes and images of pain.
Then recovering his composure, hand fast in hand, Faversham began to talk
more calmly, drawing out for her as best he could, so that it need not be
done again--and up to the very evening of the murder--the history of the
nine months which had, so to speak, thrown his whole being into the
melting-pot, and through the fusing and bruising of an extraordinary
experience, had remade a man.
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