"Yes—I think there's nothing ever done, or made, or written of, or sung of by poets, more beautiful than a soul, a poor, unhappy human soul, coming into its own once more! Oh, I don't believe I can ever make you feel it as I feel it—but I don't believe there's an adventure or a movement in all life more beautiful than the rehabilitation—that's the only word I can use!—of a man's heart, or a woman's! Think of it, Jim!—what can be lovelier than the restoration of sanity and beauty and meaning to a suffering and tortured life? Health after sickness is lovely, and so is healing after disease, and quietness after unrest, and peace after struggle. But that, Jim, is only for the body. It's only for something of a day or two, or a year or two. When a soul is redeemed, it's something that leaves you face to face with—with Eternity!"
Again he studied her rapt and mournful eyes, at sea, wondering to what new turn the sacrificial instinct of her sex was leading her.
"What has made you think of all this?" he demanded of her, a little unhappily, a little afraid of the old wounds that were healing so slowly. "Why should you remind me of how hard it is, and how little I've been able to do?"
She was silent for several minutes again, as they walked on, slowly, under the spectral autumn trees, with the rustling dead leaves at their feet. She found it hard to answer him.
"'The saints are only the sinners who kept on trying!'" she quoted to him, for the second time in their lives. Then she came to a full stop.
"Oh, Jim, I need you so much, now!" she cried out, at last, pitifully, and still again he could not bridge the abyss that lay between one thought and another.
"Need me?"
"Yes, need you!"
Again a dead leaf fluttered and drifted between them.
"What is it?" he asked, more gently.