“I had never guessed, I had never dreamed, I had never read in any book that anything could be so beautiful. It was beyond all words. It was more wonderful than dawn at sea. I leaned my head against her and cried for joy. And she soothed me as a mother soothes her child. But she was crying too, crying for sheer joy. I felt her tears on my face. She needed me as I needed her. That was the most wonderful of all, her need of me. We had been drawn to each other from the ends of the earth, and we were safe in each other’s arms at last.
“And then gradually, imperceptibly, a change came. The same tide which had brought me to her feet began to draw me away again, and sudden terror seized me that I was going to lose her. I clung convulsively to her, but my arms were no longer round her. We were apart, stretching out our hands to each other. Her figure was growing dimmer and dimmer in a golden mist. In an agony I cried to her. ‘Where shall I find you? Tell me how to reach you?’ And she laughed, and her voice came serene and reassuring. ‘We shall meet. You are on your way to me. You will find me on the high road.’
“And we were parted from each other, and I came slowly back over immense distances and moving waveless tides of space; back to this room, and the dawn coming up behind the tower of Westminster.”
“You awoke in fact,” I said.
“No. I had not been asleep. I returned. And an immense peace enveloped me. But gradually that too, ebbed away as I began to realise that I had not seen her face. She was in the world, she was waiting for me. Thank God that was no delusion. But which of all the thousands of women in the crowd was she? How was I to know her? ‘You are on your way to me, you will find me on the high road.’ That was what she had said, and it flashed through my mind that she might be Mildred. ‘You are on your way to me.’ I was to motor Mildred to Burnham Beeches that very afternoon. I had arranged to take her there before I had received the letter about my sister. Chipps, I dare say you will think me heartless, perhaps you often have, but I simply dared not start off to Yorkshire that morning, even if my sister was dangerously ill. I had a feeling that my whole future was at stake, that I must see Mildred again, that nothing must come between her and me. I went with her to Burnham Beeches. We spent the afternoon together.”
“I have not forgotten that fact,” I said.
“And I found I was mistaken,” he said. “She knew nothing. The same evening I went to Yorkshire, but I did not find my sister. She had died suddenly that afternoon.”
“You would have been in time to see her if you had let Mildred alone,” I said brutally.
He did not answer for a long time.
“For ten years I looked for her, now in one person now in another, but I could not find her. I tried to go to her again in that waking dream, but I could not find the way. I could not discover any clue to her. For ten years she made no sign. At last I supposed she was dead, and I gave her up.