We did not look at each other. In the dining-room we continued to speak of trifles, pouncing with eager dexterity and emulous speed upon any sudden silence that showed its head. Covertly once or twice I dared to look at the well-remembered face: fed swiftly on the manliness, the gentleness; the proud grey hair, the noble forehead, the charitable eyes; the mouth. My heart beat tempestuously.
Then God, in His Goodness, performed a miracle within me.
The mystical delight seized me. As on Jordan morning, I knew I should reach the Rapture. All love was one, and the Stranger was my Robbie. His face was the face of my visions, the face I had called Robbie's, that was not Robbie's. I knew that all the torrential affection which in dream and diary I had poured forth upon my vision, had been for my Love who stood before me now. The magical moment for which I had been born was at last upon me—oh, hope too hard to bear—but he must speak the word. He alone could complete the miracle, fulfil the hope, carry love's banners to their ultimate victory in my heart.
The silences grew longer and more shameless. My heart throbbed, my body trembled, my spirit was faint with expectation. He got up from his chair and began pacing up and down the room, talking of something, talking of nothing, moistening his parched lips, seeking through moments of unbearable longing for the words that would not come.
At this moment of time, which is present in my heart more clearly than any other of the memorable moments I have tried to describe in this record of twenty-two years, I was sitting on the old horsehair Chesterfield couch against the window; around me were the familiar objects of this chiefly familiar room—Aunt Jael's traditional chair, and my Grandmother's; the faded rosewood piano, the ancient chiffonièr, the odour of my childhood, the taste of religion and many meals, the all-pervading gloom. God was everywhere around me, the God of my childhood, the God of Beatings.
He stopped in his pacing up and down. I knew that his heart had stopped. His voice was husky, faint with passion and hope and fear.
"Miss Traies, may I ask you a question?"
I could not look up. My heart was near breaking point. I could not speak. Perhaps I nodded.
"Will you—promise me this? That if the answer to the question is 'No,' you will forgive me for having asked it, and like and respect me not less well than now?"
This longer sentence came a little more easily: words gave courage to each other. The first question had been harder; though the hardest was yet to come.