But as he walked slowly home, he knew that something within himself had gone forever. Never again would he be absolutely certain of any human being. Katya, the indefatigable worker, the passionless comrade, the clear thinker; Katya the unconfused, had tangled life and the threads that bound one to another beyond his power of ever straightening. Never again would he be able to say of any human being "I am sure of this. I am positive of that."
It was a warm night but Roger was cold and lit a fire. Before it he sat till dawn, moving only to reach for wood in the basket on the hearth.
Was Katya right? Would he run from love if it ever came to him, devastating burning passion in a body other than Katya's? Before such a love as this his love for Anne was the flickering of a tiny flame, as small, as pale as Anne's feeling for a world beyond the narrow limits of her own individual safety.
And Anne?
Again Roger lived that first hour on the Bluff, his own surprise and tenderness at Anne's kiss. The night on the lake when her lips had clung as hotly as his own.
What was he himself?
What was Anne?
To-night, in this whirlwind that was Katya, he felt strangely near to Anne. When at last he groped in the wood basket and found it empty, he rose and went to bed. The east was lighting. The bed was wide and chill, as if the little ghost of Anne were there beside him.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Day after day Anne sat at rest in the vast silence. Far back in space and time she had waved a last good-bye up the black funnel of the staircase to Hilda, holding Rogie, for, in the end, Belle had prevailed and Anne had come alone. Trains and stages and the creaking wagon of old Timothy Potter had brought her from the world below and laid her in the heart of this little grassy meadow. Ringed by mountain peaks it lay, small and still, at the top of the world.