"There is some reason for it," she answered bravely, "I feel it though I cannot see it."
"Some reason—yes, but that reason is not justice—not the little human justice that we can call by the name. It's something infinitely bigger than any idea that we have known."
"I can trust," she said softly, "but I can't reason."
"Don't reason—don't even attempt to—let God run his world. Do you think if we didn't believe in the meaning—in the purpose of it all that you and I could stand together here like this? It's because we believe that we can be happy even while we suffer."
"Then you will be happy again—to-morrow?"
"Surely. Perhaps to-night—who knows? I've had a shock. My brain is whirling and I can't see straight. In a little while it will be over and I shall steady down."
"But I should like to help you now while it lasts," she said.
"You are helping me—it's a mercy that you stand there and listen to my wild talk. Do you know I was telling myself as I came along the road just now that there wasn't a living soul to whom I should dare to say that I was in a quake of fear."
"A quake of fear?" She looked at him with swimming eyes, and by that look he saw that she loved him. If he had stretched out his arms, he knew that the passion of her sorrow would have swept her to his breast; and he felt that every fibre of his starved soul and body cried out for the divine food that she offered. At the moment he did not stop to ask himself whether it was his flesh or his spirit that hungered after her, for his whole being had dissolved into the longing which drew him as with cords to her lips. All he understood at the instant was that in his terrible loneliness love had been offered him and he must refuse the gift. A thought passed like a drawn sword between them, and he saw in his imagination Lydia lowering her black veil at their last parting.
"It's a kind of cowardliness, I suppose," he went on with his eyes on the ground, "but I was thinking that minute how greatly I needed help and how much—how very much—you had given me. If I ever learn really to live it will be because of you—because of your wonderful courage, your unfailing sweetness——"