"But he knew America would come in. I believed it too, because he did. Just at the right time. 'All the rest have fought like mad till they're tired—though they'll die fighting,' he said. 'America's not tired. She's got everything and she sees red with frenzy at the bestiality. She'll burst in—just at the right time!' Jackson knew!"
"I must not go trembling to her," Donal said on the morning when at last—long last, it seemed—he drove with Coombe up the moor road to Darreuch. "But," bravely, "what does it matter? I'm trembling because I'm going to her!"
He had been talking about her for weeks—for days he had been able to talk of nothing else— Coombe had listened as if he heard echoes from a past when he would have so talked and dared not utter a word. He had talked as a boy lover talks—as a young bridegroom might let himself pour his joy forth to his most sacredly trusted friend.
Her loveliness, the velvet of her lifting eyes—the wonder of her trusting soul—the wonder of her unearthly selfless sweetness!
"It was always the same kind of marvel every time you saw her," he said boyishly. "You couldn't believe there could be such sweetness on earth—until you saw her again. Even her eyes and her little mouth and her softness were like that. You had to tell yourself about them over and over again to make them real when she wasn't there!"
He was still thin, but the ghastly hollows had filled and his smile scarcely left his face—and he had waited as long as he could.
"And to see her with a little child in her arms!" he had murmured. "Robin! Holding it—and being careful! And showing it to me!"
After he first caught sight of the small old towers of Darreuch he could not drag his eyes from them.
"She's there! She's there! They're both there together!" he said over and over. Just before they left the carriage he wakened as it were and spoke to Coombe.