She sat for hours as the train moved over the level plain, the look of abstraction in her eyes and the gentleness and strength in her face revealing themselves—as the lines of a landscape are sometimes revealed by a change of light or by the passing of a storm—all the surface life slipped from it.
And Richard More, watching, had a sudden sense of the mysterious force of very familiar things.... This was Eleanor’s face—that he had known and loved for years; and it was the face of a strange woman, an unknown majestic presence who moved beside him always.
And then the mask of greatness would slip from her, and she would chatter for days about nothing, trivial things—delighting like a child in the discoveries he brought and laid in her lap when he alighted at some lonely station—a flower or a bit of mineral; and the train would plunge on again, dipping around the curve of a hill, climbing along a dizzy cliff, while she sat beside him, her hand a little reached out to him, her breath half stayed by a glance of delight.
“It is a voyage of discovery,” he said in her ear.
“How foolish—to want to stay in one place—always!” Her hand swept up to the piling masses of snow, glacial vastnesses that gleamed high above them. “How foolish!” she said softly.
And the strange look of dignity and strength came swiftly into her face.
“A voyage of discovery,” he repeated.... “Do you think we shall find it?”
She looked at him with puzzled eyes.
“Find—?” she said vaguely.
“The Chinese coat?”