Her eyes had a far-away look in them, as though they were envisioning that narrow, winding track which leads, somewhen, to the place where dreams even the most wonderful of them—shall become realities.
Glorious faith and optimism of youth! If we could only recapture it in those after years, when time has added tolerance and a little wisdom to our harvest’s store, the houses where dreams come true might add themselves together until there were whole streets of them—glowing townships—instead of merely an isolated dwelling here or there.
As Tormarin listened to Jean’s young, eager voice, his face softened and some of the tired lines in it seemed to smooth themselves out “Little Comrade,” he said gently, and she felt her breath quicken as he called her again by the name which he had used at Montavan—and once since, when they had come suddenly face to face at Coombe Eavie Station. But that second time the words had escaped him unawares. Now he was using them deliberately, withholding no part of their significance. “Little comrade, I think the man who ‘fares straight on’ with you for fellow-traveller will find the House of Dreams-Come-True. But it isn’t—just any man who may start that journey with you. It mustn’t be”—his grave eyes held hers intently—“a man who has tried to find the road once before—and failed.”
It seemed to Jean that, as he spoke, the wall which he had built up between them since she came to Staple crumbled away. This was the same man she had known at Montavan, whose hands reached out to hers across some fixed dividing line which neither he nor she might pass. She knew now what that dividing line must be—the shadow flung by a past love, his love for Nesta Freyne which had ended in hopeless tragedy.
There must always be a limit set to any friendship of theirs. So much he had implied at their first meeting. But, since then, he had taken even that friendship from her, substituting a deliberate indifference against which she had struggled in vain.
And now, without knowing quite how it had come about, the barrier was down. They were comrades once more—she and the Englishman from Montavan—and she was conscious of a great content that it should be so.
For the moment she asked nothing more, was unconscious of any further wish. The woman in her still slumbered, and, to the girl, this friendship seemed enough. She did not realise that something deeper, more imperative in its ultimate demands, was mingled with it—was, indeed, unrecognised by her, the very essence of it.