He had got her back and now he was content. For a moment she listened to his footsteps, then she rose to her feet in a vain protest against the tears that were running down her face. She had everything she could want, she told herself, and yet for a second time, absurdly, she wept.
What she hoped, after all, she admitted presently, was impossible. She had hoped for her old blind worship back again in answer to James's love. She could not have it back, it was gone, and she was afraid. She had covered herself from the world with James's strength, with his assurance and his love for her. His kindness had been her shelter from suffering, from truth, from life. Now these gifts of his protected her no longer; she stood alone.
She walked over to the window and pulled the curtains aside. The street before her was empty under its shining lamps, but across the square, through the bare tossing boughs of the trees, people moved down the pavement, talking and shuffling their feet. Two taxis ran quickly past them, blotting them out, but when the noise had stopped Mary knew that they were poor people, men and women. As she listened to them her mood changed. After all, she was not alone. Close to her were millions of her fellow-men, huddled together in narrow streets because they too were afraid of being alone, afraid of silence, of the cold empty night. And they had brought with them the fruit of their knowledge and of their labour—they had brought their suffering, their ignorance and helplessness.
She leaned forward a little, resting her arms against the glass. There about her lay the great violent city, and beyond it, beyond the downs and the dark sea, down the curve of the world its other cities rang with the pain, the defiance, the glory of man. Now she too was to share man's task and his inheritance. She had left her ordered house for the clamour and promise of life....
Behind her the lights burned steadily in the big gay room. Outside a man laughed and the wind lifted the branches in the square.
THE END