"Well, and so can you." He searched the sensitive white face that gave no sign. What strange and unsuspected enemy had that not unvaliant spirit encountered in her path? As he looked at her, something born of their nearness—terrible offspring of true marriage—spoke to him out of the silence, telling him how each time this woman went straying in thought along that way of promise that is wont to smile so benignly upon young expectant wives, each time, before she could taste any of the natural joy and pride in her estate, came crushing back upon her the dead weight of their long fear, the gathered momentum of all their long terror-stricken fleeing.
The sudden change in his face showed her that her secret was no longer her own.
"Oh, what is it like?" she cried out, suddenly. "What is it like to have hoped and longed all these months, instead of dreaded?"
"Hush! hush!" he said, shrinking.
"I, who was so eager to know all that women can know, I shall never know that."
He sank down on the terrace-steps in the twilight, and buried his face in his hands.
"Did I ever tell you"—her voice sounded faint and far above him, like the voice of some disembodied spirit—"did I ever tell you how proud I used to be to know my father once said that I was the symbol of my parents' single year of perfect happiness, the inheritor of the best moments life had brought them? Ethan"—she bent over him, whispering hurriedly and panting a little like one pursued—"the thought clutches at me in the night, it won't let me go—"
"What thought?" said the muffled voice.
"That for a child of fear and shrinking there isn't much place in this world."