There was a glory in her face as she answered, "To do right always. Until death—and beyond."
"If we have trust, we have everything," he said, and a note of sadness had crept into his voice. "Life has taught me that without it the rest is only ashes."
"I am glad for your sake that you can go," she replied. "It would be harder here."
The man's part was his, and though she would not have had it otherwise, she understood that the man's part would be the easier. He would go away; he would do his work; his life would be crowded to the brim with incident, with practical interests; and, though she could trust him not to forget, she knew that he would not remember as she remembered in the place where she had known him.
"The work will be worth doing," he answered, "even if the record is soon lost. It will mean little in the way of ambition, but I think that ambition scarcely counts with me now. What I am seeking is an opportunity for impersonal service—a wider field in which to burn up my energy." His voice softened, and she felt, for the first time, that he was talking impersonally because he was afraid of the danger that lay in the silence and the twilight—that he was speaking in casual phrases because the real thought, the true words, were unutterable. She was sure now, she was confident; and the knowledge gave her strength to look with clear eyes on the parting—and afterwards——
He began to talk of his work, while they turned and walked slowly back to the boarding-house.
"I will write to you," he said, "but remember I shall write only of what I think. I shall write the kind of letters that I should write to a man."
"It all interests me," she answered. "Your thought is a part of you—it is yourself."
"It is the only self I dare follow for the present, and even that changes day by day. I see so many things now, if not differently—well, at least in an altered perspective. It is like travelling on a dark road, as soon as one danger is past, others spring up out of the obscurity. The war has cast a new light on every belief, on every conviction that I thought I possessed. The values of life are changing hourly—they are in a process of readjustment. Facts that appeared so steadfast, so clear, to my vision a year ago, are now out of focus. I go on, for I always sought truth, not consistency, but I go on blindly. I am trying to feel the road since I cannot see it. I am searching the distance for some glimmer of dawn—for some light I can travel by. I know, of course, that our first task is winning the war, that until the war is won there can be no security for ideas or mankind, that unless the war is won, there can be no freedom for either individual or national development."
As they reached the gate, he broke off, and held out his hand. "But I meant to write you all this. It is the only thing I can write you. You will see Letty sometimes?"