During his speech he remained very still, without gesture, without change of expression in his face; he made no movement; only his voice deepened and grew rhythmical. And a power emanated from him she hardly dared resist, much less deny. His voice, his words, reached depths in her she scarcely knew herself. He was so strong, so humble, so simple, yet so strangely peaceful. And—suddenly she realized it—so far beyond her, yet akin. She became aware that the figure seated in the chair, watching her, talking, was but a fraction of his whole self. He was—the word occurred to her—immense. Was she, too, immense?
More than troubled, she was profoundly stimulated. The mothering instinct in her for the first time seemed to fail a little. The woman in her trembled, not quite sure of itself. But, besides these two, there was another part of her that listened and felt joy—a white, radiant joy which, if she allowed, must become ecstasy. Whence came this hint of unearthly rapture? Again there rose before her the two significant words: "There" and "Here."
"I do not quite understand," she replied, after a moment's pause, looking into his eyes steadily, her voice firm, her young face very sweet; "I do not fully understand, perhaps. But I sympathize." Then she added suddenly, with a little smile: "But, at any rate, I did not come to make you apologize—Julian. Please be sure of that. I came to see if I might be of any use—if there was anything I might do to make——"
His quick interruption transfixed her.
"You came," he said in a distinct, low tone, "because you love me and wish me to love you. But we do love already, you, dear Fillery, and I—only our love is in that great Service where we all three belong. It is not of this—it is not here——" making an impatient gesture with his hand to indicate his general surroundings.
He broke off instantly, noticing the expression in her face.
She had realized suddenly, as he spoke, the blind fury of reproduction that sweeps helpless men and women everywhere into union, then flings them aside exhausted, useless, its purpose accomplished. Though herself never yet caught by it, the vivid realization made her turn from life with pity and revulsion. Yet—were these thoughts her own? Whence did they come, if not? And what was this new blind thing straining in her mind for utterance, bursting upwards like a flame, threatening to split it asunder even in its efforts to escape? "What are these words we use?" darted across her. "What do they mean? What is it we're talking about really? I don't know quite. Yet it's real, yes, real and true. Only it's beyond our words. It's something I know, but have forgotten...." That was his word again: "Forgotten"! While they used words together, something in her went stumbling, groping, thrusting towards a great shining revelation for which no words existed. And a strange, deep anguish seized her suddenly.
"Oh!" he cried, "I make you suffer again. The fire leaves you. You are white. I—I will apologize"—he slipped on to his knees before her—"but you do not understand. It was not your sacredness I spoke of." Already on his knees before her, but level with her face owing to his great stature, gazing into her eyes with an expression of deep tenderness, humility, almost suffering, he added: "It was our other love, I meant, our great happy service, the thing we have forgotten. You came, I thought, to help me to remember that. The way home—I saw you knew." The light streamed back into his face and eyes.
The tumult and confusion in the girl were natural enough. Her resourcefulness, however, did not fail her at this curious and awkward moment. His words, his conduct were more than she could fathom, yet behind both she divined a source of remote inspiration she had never known before in any "man." The beauty and innocence on the face arrested her faculties for a second. That nameless emotion stirred again. A glimmer of some faint, distant light, whose origin she could not guess, passed flickering across her inner tumult. Some faculty she could not name, at any rate, blew suddenly to white heat in her. This youth on his knees before her had spoken truth. Without knowing it even herself, she had given him her love, a virgin love, a woman's love hitherto unawakened in her by any other man, but a love not of this earth quite—because of him who summoned it into sudden flower.
Yet at the same time he denied the need of it! He spoke of some marvellous great shining Service that was different from the love of man and woman.