He lifted his head, his eyes full of a wild will to know what she would say. “Even though—what?” he asked, in a voice which would not be denied.
“Why should I say—what you do not?” she asked, with that strange little smile of hers.
“I thought I mustn’t say it. But now that you—— Oh, I’ll say it, if you want to hear it.”
“I do. You might at least give me that to keep, too.”
“Oh!” He turned and looked straight into her uplifted eyes. Then he said the words—that he had thought he wouldn’t say. And he heard the answer. After that he didn’t know how time passed, because there seemed to be no time any more—just eternity, which was soon to separate them.
Then, all at once: “Jane,” he said, heavily, “perhaps some time—when you have been through—what you will go through over there——”
She shook her head. “It would never make me—what I should have to be to fill the place your wife must fill. You couldn’t have a hypocrite taking that place—and I couldn’t play the part of one. There’s a great gulf fixed between us—no doubt of that. I can’t accept your beliefs—and you can’t accept my—lack of them. It will always be so. As long as I can never say a prayer—and as long as you live by prayer——”
“Do you remember,” he asked, “how glad you were to have a prayer said over Sadie Dunstan?”
She nodded. “Because it meant the difference between custom and outrageous ignoring of custom. And I liked the prayer, and respected your belief in it. But—I didn’t for a moment think any one but ourselves heard it.”
“Sometime,” he said again, sturdily, “you will pray, and be glad to pray. And you will know that Someone hears.”