But, though he had conquered, she felt broken.
“Life is so long, Geoffrey.”
He did not reply. She knew that he, too, was looking down that vista of long years where they must walk apart.
“And life—founded on pity——“
“More will come. Something like a mother’s love.”
She knew that he spoke the truth. That vision of Maurice’s terror-stricken face—reading her letter—had stabbed to more than pity. The protecting passion that had flung itself between him and the reading had in it a deeper quality. She could not analyze the fiercely defensive tenderness. Presently, when her tears were over, and his arms still around her, they were looking silently into the fire, she said, “I won’t disappoint you, Geoffrey.”
He hid his face against hers. She felt that his cheek was wet.
For a dizzy moment a greater pity, a fiercer tenderness, rose within her, a passion far other than the maternal passion that was to take her back to Maurice.
His cheek was wet; she clasped him in her arms.
And as they clung together, both felt the pendulum-swing of human emotion that from very excess of height plunges into abysses, the dark of unknown depths. They had not escaped the wrench with fundamental things, the swinging stupor of ecstasy and anguish. Tearless now, and in silence, they clung and kissed each other.