“What is the use of it all then?” he said.
“One thinks of other people, I suppose,” said Winifred, trying to understand his mood. “So many people are ready to believe evil. If you are not glad for your own sake, you must be for those for whom you care—”
She stopped trembling, for he was facing her again, with his eyes fixed upon her, and a depth in their gaze before which her heart fluttered and leapt up. For an instant she felt as if it had met his own; for an instant the happiness that flooded her carried her on its triumphant tide; for an instant the world was full of a sweet joy, beyond either measurement or control,—for an instant and no more. Her voice had scarcely faltered, and she might have been only completing the sentence when she said in a low tone,—
“For Miss Lovell, especially.”
She was looking away from him and did not know whether he had changed his position or not, for he did not answer. There was a strange heavy silence in which she could hear a watch ticking, the sigh of the wind among the fir-trees, a scream from the distant train, the throbbing of her heart. All her strength seemed to have gone out in those four words.
“Yes,” said Anthony, at last, hoarsely, “for Miss Lovell, especially.”
Something in his voice or in the mechanical repetition of her words brought back Winifred’s courage.
“For her sake and your mother’s,” she said, earnestly. “However insignificant an accusation may be, its falseness must be a grief to the friends who best know how very false it is. I hope you will not try to prevent our being glad, although I dare say the poor man’s fate makes rejoicing seem heartless.”
“It makes me believe that failure is the end of our best hopes,—of all that is best in us,” said Anthony, standing with his back to her and speaking in a tone of deep despondency.
“Not failure, really,” said Winifred, with a flush of lovely eager colour rising in her cheeks. “Surely it is not possible that what is best can fail. It may seem so even to ourselves, but it cannot be the thing itself, only our way of thinking of it. Don’t you believe that failure and victory are sometimes one?” Anthony was silent. Was it so indeed? Sometimes one, triumph and defeat, death and life, the end and the beginning? Was it now—when he was ready to cry out that all was at its dreariest, with pangs of which he was tasting the most utter sharpness—now that he caught, through the clouds, a glimpse of something beyond change and beyond sorrow? He came and stood in front of Winifred, and put out his hand.