It had been, perhaps, to keep the dream safely around them that she had shown him only the calm; for now she asked, and he felt the echo of that suffering—that shared suffering—in it, “You had, then, chosen to go?”
Somehow he knew that they were safe in the littler sense, that she would keep the dream unawakened, even if they spoke of the outside life. “Yes,” he said, “you saw what was happening to me, Eppie. I had chosen to go. But your letter came, and, instead, I chose to come to you.”
She asked no further question, walking beside him with all her tranquillity.
But, to her, it was not in a second childhood, not in a fairy-tale, that they went. She was tranquil, for him; a child, for him; healing, unexacting nature, for him. But she knew she had not needed his admission to know it, that it was life and death that went together.
Sometimes, as they walked, the whole glory of the day melted into a phantasmagoria, unreal, specious, beside the intense reality of their unspoken thoughts, his thoughts and hers; those thoughts that left them only this little strip of fairy-land where they could meet in peace. Thoughts only, not dislikes, not indifferences, sundered them. Their natures, through all nature’s gamut, chimed; they looked upon each other—when in fairy-land—with eyes of love. But above this accord was a region where her human breath froze in an icy airlessness, where her human flesh shattered itself against ghastly precipices. To see those thoughts of Gavan’s was like having the lunar landscape suddenly glare at one through a telescope. His thoughts and hers were as real as life and death; they alone were real; only—and this was why, under its burden, Eppie’s heart throbbed more deeply, more strongly,—only, life conquered death. No, more still,—for so the strange evening vision had borne its speechless, sightless witness,—life had already conquered death. She had not needed him to tell her that, either.
And these days were life; not the dream he thought them, not the fairy-tale, but balmy dawn stealing in, fresh, revivifying, upon his long, arctic night; the flush of spring over the lunar landscape. So she saw it with her eyes of faith.
The mother was strong in her. She could bide her time. She could see death near him and, so that he should not see her fear, smile at him. She could play games with him, and wait.
II
IM GRAINGER arrived that evening, and Gavan was able to observe, at the closest sort of quarters, his quondam rival.