“‘Oh, my God, it has come’”
Instinctively he swayed toward her, all the need of her crying out suddenly within him, then he pulled himself [p265] sharply together, and, resolutely thrusting his hands in his pockets, rose and took a turn up and down the porch.
“Do you mind reading to me a little?” he asked at length. “There are forty devils in my head to-day, all hammering on the back of my eyeballs. I’ll get my Tennyson; you like him better than you do the others. Wait; I’m going.”
But she was up the steps before him, eager to serve, and determined to spare him every effort.
Through the long afternoon Guinevere read, stumbling over the strange words and faltering through the difficult passages, but vibrant to the beauty and the pathos of it all. On and on she read, and the sun went down, and the fragrance of dying locust bloom came faintly from the hill, and overhead in the tree-tops the evening breeze murmured its world-old plaint of loneliness and longing.
Suddenly Guinevere’s voice faltered, then steadied, then faltered again, then without warning she flung her arms across the back of the bench, and, dropping [p266] her head upon them, burst into passionate sobs.
Hinton, who had been sitting for a long time with his hands pressed over his eyes, sprang up to go to her.
“Guinevere,” he said, “what’s the matter? Don’t cry, dear!” Then, as he stumbled, a look of terror crossed his face and he caught at the railing for support. “Where are you?” he asked sharply. “Speak to me! Give me your hand! I can’t see—I can’t—oh, my God, it has come!”