“Go and tell Aymer and get your breakfast.”
“You are not going to stay out in this rain?”
“You know I love rain, and I’ve had breakfast.”
Before he could stop her she had turned and disappeared up the winding path that led out eventually on to the open down.
Christopher looked after her a moment doubtfully, but her strange fondness for walking in the rain was well known and he had no reason or right to stop her. So he went indoors to Cæsar. But Patricia walked on with rapid steps, never pausing till she was well outside the confines of the park amongst the red ploughed fields and bare downs. The rain swept in her face and the wind rushed by her as she walked with lifted head and exultant heart, hearing the whole chorus of creation around her, conscious only of the uplifting joy of the great light that had broken in on her. At last she stopped by a gate that led into a field of newly-turned earth—downland just broken by the plough, lying bare and open to the breath of heaven, and beyond, the swelling line of downs was blurred with misty rain and merged into the driving 292 grey clouds above. Behind her in an oak tree a robin was singing with passionate intensity. She drew a deep breath and then held out her arms to the world.
“I understand, I understand,” she whispered. “Love and Christopher. Love and Christopher, there is nothing else in the whole world.”
She had accepted the revelation without fear, without question, without distrust. She gave no thought at all at present as to Christopher’s attitude to her, as to whether he had anything to give in return for her great gift of herself. She gave herself to Love first, to him after, if such were Love’s will. But it made no difference whether he knew or not, she was his, and the recognition drowned all lesser emotion in the great depth of its joy. She wasted no time in lamenting her blindness or the interlude with another lesser love: it troubled her not at all, for by such steps had she climbed to this unexpected summit. Just at present the glory of that was all-satisfying, so much more than she had ever looked for or imagined possible, that to demand the uttermost crown of his returning love was in these first moments too great a consummation to be borne.
She stood there with her hands clasped and the only words she found were, “Christopher and Love,” and again, “Love and Christopher,” as if they were the alphabet of a new language.
Quite slowly the physical horizon crept up to this plane of exultant joy and claimed her, but even as she recognised the claim she knew the familiar world would bear for her a new aspect, and found no resentment, only a quiet relief as it closed her in. The languor and fatigue of the backward journey did not distress her, every step of the way she was studying the news.
Every blade of grass and every twig spoke of this new language to her, proclaiming a kinship that made 293 her rich in sympathy and comprehension of all humble lovely things.