He wondered often and sometimes, when he sat alone in his room at night, found something more than wonder in his mind—something that, if she had not forbidden it, would have been fear because of strange things he saw in her.
He could not question her. He dared not even remotely touch on the dream. She was so well, her child was so well. She was as any young mother might have been who could be serene in her husband's absence because she knew he was safe and would soon return.
"Is she always as calm?" he once asked Dowie. "Does she never seem to be reminded of what would have been if he were alive?"
Dowie shook her head and he saw that the old anxiousness came back upon her.
"My lord, she believes he is alive when she sees him. That's what troubles me even in my thankfulness. I don't understand, God help me! I was afraid when she saw the child that it might all come over her again in a way that would do her awful harm. But when I laid the little thing down by her she just lay there herself and looked at it as if something was uplifting her. And in a few seconds she whispered, 'He is like Donal.' And then she said to herself, soft but quite clear, 'Donal, Donal!' And never a tear rose. Perhaps," hesitating over it, "it's the blessedness of time. A child's a wonderful thing—and so is time. Sometimes," a queer sigh broke from her, "when I've been hard put to it by trouble, I've said to myself, 'Well the Almighty did give us time—whatever else he takes away.'"
But Coombe mysteriously felt that it was not merely time which had calmed her, though any explanation founded on material reasoning became more remote each day. The thought which came to him at times had no connection with temporal things. He found he was gravely asking himself what aspect mere life would have worn if Alixe had come to him every night in such form as had given him belief in the absolute reality of her being. If he had been convinced that he heard the voice of Alixe—if she had smiled and touched him with her white hands as she had never touched him in life—if her eyes had been unafraid and they had spoken together "only of happy things"—and had understood as one soul—what could the mere days have held of hurt? There was only one possible reply and it seemed to explain his feeling that she was sustained by something which was not alone the mere blessedness of time.
He became conscious one morning of the presence of a new expression in her eyes. There was a brave radiance in them and, before, he had known that in their radiance there had been no necessity for bravery. He felt a subtle but curious difference.
Her child had been long asleep and she lay like a white dove on her pillows when he came to make his brief good-night visit. She was very still and seemed to be thinking. Her touch on his arm was as the touch of a butterfly when she at last put out her hand to him.
"He may not come to-night," she said.
He put his own hand over hers and hoped it was done quietly.