"There can be no cloud, and he will soon rejoice that such a friend is in the land of the living."
But suspicion had already wakened in Yeoland.
"You say 'he will rejoice'; you don't say 'he does.'"
"Of course he does. How can you doubt it?"
"Tell him you have seen me, and that I am a perceptible shade wiser than when I left England. Tell him that incident in the wood has come near breaking my heart. I can feel great griefs if I don't show them. I do not expect him to slip into the old relations as you have. You and I were a couple of wild wood children together for years, until our elders trapped us and attempted to tame and educate and spoil us. Yet between him and me now there are close bonds enough—bonds as deep to me, as binding, as eternal as the dawn-light we both adore. But he's a fire-worshipper, or something, and I'm a Christian; so, when all's said, we shall never get straight to one another's hearts like Honor and Christo. It isn't possible. I thought to meet him with a handshake to bridge the years, and a silent understanding too deep for words; I pictured him all the way home as my friend of friends, and now—now I ought to go upon my knees to him and ask him to put his foot on my neck and forgive me for that moonlight madness."
"Now I know that it is you, not I, who fail to understand my husband," said Honor. "He is a greater man by far than you think or I know. Never utter or dream these things any more, for they are wrong. Forget them and look forward to happiness."
They talked a while longer on divers themes; then the woman rose to return home, and Christopher, declaring an intention to visit Endicott's that evening, went back to Godleigh.
Each now marvelled much from a personal point of view at this, their first meeting—at its familiarity of texture and lack of distinction. Both indeed felt dumbly astonished that, after such a gap, converse could be renewed thus easily; yet they joyed in the meeting; and while Yeoland ingenuously gloried in the sight and voice of the woman he had loved, Honor's pleasure was of a colour more sober, a quality more intricate.
CHAPTER II.
THE MEETING OF THE MEN