There was a great deal more, but I cared nothing about it. At that moment it seemed to me that all I had tried to do and hoped to do for my country was swallowed up in the one great possession, the one great fact which overwhelmed everything.
"Am I doing wrong in telling you this?" she asked. "It seems as though there is nothing else in life now but that, because it has meant everything else—faith, religion, God. It has made the world new, it has broken down all barriers and glorified all life. Oh, my love, my love, do you understand?"
"I understand," I replied, "I understand."
And then the truth which had contained everything, the truth which was the centre and circumference of all that came to me during the time I thought I was dead, flooded my heart and brain.
"Life and love are everything, for these mean God."
I did not ask her the result of my struggle with Liddicoat, or the outcome of the plans I had made. I wanted to ask her, and yet I did not; somehow that did not seem to matter.
I heard the birds singing in the trees around the house; heard the lowing of the cattle in the meadows; saw the sunlight streaming through the window; breathed the sweetness of the morning air.
I had indeed entered the light and life of a new day; the world was flooded with a glory that was infinite; barriers were broken down because I had learnt the secret of life!
For some time we were silent; again there seemed nothing to say, because everything was too wonderful for words.
"During the time your life hung on a thread, and when the doctors doubted whether you could live, even then I had no fear," she went on presently. "That which had come to me was so wonderful that it seemed to make everything possible, and—I cannot put it into words—but while I was almost mad with anxiety, in spite of a kind of certainty which possessed me, I knew that all was well, I knew that somehow—somehow we should be brought together and that life's secret would be ours."