For a while she was silent, and when she spoke he looked at her, and saw that there were tears in her eyes.
"Oh, I cannot argue it out," she cried. "Of course, you can array fact upon fact to prove me wrong and foolish. Oh—Doctor Ogilvie, be fair! Credit me with a purpose! I have never before had a chance to go on in a simple, clearly defined line of action. It would not seem very much to most people, I suppose—merely to stay here, to live in this little cottage with Eleanor and the children. But it's the only real life I've ever known, as far as I can remember. I was dropped into this place by accident, and I found something to do. What is more, I found myself among real people. It is not much—but to live my own life—that is what I want!" In her emotion she stood before him, straight and purposeful. "Won't you give me credit for the strength of it, and not believe me merely willful?"
He was deeply moved; she laid her own in the hand he held out to her. "I will credit you with everything that is brave and good," he said, with utmost seriousness. "If you are really determined to remain here, I will not interfere. If this is what you choose, I will try to believe it is the best thing for you—the only thing."
Her earnestness had fanned in his heart an altar-flame of worship and new faith; its glow shone in his eyes, and her face paled under his look. In the tenseness of the moment there could be no speech, but it seemed as if their souls sped toward each other on a bridge of understanding. They were hushed before the vision of great elemental truth; and although later they came to believe that they had been deluded, that vision of truth remained as having passed between them, a revelation and a message.
Afterward, in the hours when doubt and pain and loneliness were her companions, she often wondered what the outcome might have been; but she could only wonder, for at the highest moment of their silent communion there sounded a well-remembered view-halloo, and a quick turn of the head showed the flash of a big red car that was stopping before the house.
With a low cry she drew away the hand that had been held in his, turned from him, and for an instant hid her face in her two palms, needing the moment to recall her soul from the heights. When she turned at the sound of steps upon the veranda Ogilvie was gone; she stooped to pick up his worn brown cap, left unheeded upon the hearth, put it quickly into a drawer, and turned the key in the lock.
XV
The revulsion of feeling was so sharp as to demand all the effort she was capable of making to move at all. Her self-control had never before been so severely tested; the strain was so great that she forgot to smile, until Pendleton, drawing off his gloves and toasting his back at the fire, which he first took pains to rearrange with as serene assurance as if it had been his own house, said:
"Dear me, Rosamund! Why this exuberant gayety of welcome?"