“Both by thy mind and by thy body, I send thee a Sign.” The words of the Voice came back to him. Mockery! The Voice had lied. There was no God. . . .
Voices! He must get away from voices. Always, he heard voices. A second ago it had been God’s voice: now, it was the voice of a girl, her voice. He could have sworn he heard her voice. Some one was coming upstairs. Some one was opening the door. . . .
“Francis!”—more voices, would he never be done with voices—“Francis!”
His eyes, jerked suddenly from dreaming, saw a shadow glide across the room towards him. He felt his heart give a great leap as though he were dying.
“Beatrice!” he stammered, “Beatrice!”
Words went from them. They stood speechless. Their hands met in the twilight. Lips faltered to lips. Then she was in his arms; and God grew real at last. . . .
PART THIRTY-ONE
OUT OF IT
§ 1
Beatrice Cochrane stayed on at Sunflowers while the formalities of her marriage were being arranged. Patricia found her very difficult to understand. She combined, bewilderingly, idealism and common-sense, a feeling for poetry with unfailing judgment of practical values. Educationally, the Englishwoman found herself quite overmastered: the comprehensiveness of Beatrice’s college-training made British standards seem entirely out of date. And yet, in a way, Beatrice was old-fashioned; she lacked, Patricia thought, adaptability; inclined to let “ought to be” dominate “is.” Sometimes, this lack of adaptability irritated Patricia.
Beatrice, on her part, was equally puzzled. She had, as yet, no key to the English mentality. England, regarded from the Sunflowers viewpoint, appeared to her a country of postponement and acceptance. Rightly or wrongly, a thing was thus and so. If right, why seek to improve. If wrong—extraordinary, she thought, how easily the English admitted a thing could be wrong—put up with it. Sometimes, this putting-up-with-things made Beatrice perfectly furious!