“For our own peace of mind? Forgive me for arguing when everything is so difficult. But he is a man—a brave man who would rather be forever out in the cold than be a burden. Do not rob him of his right to be John Hagar if he wants to, for the sake of those he loves. You do not tell me it was love, but I am sure it was, in some mistaken way, that drove him into exile. Only love as pure as his can be our excuse for dragging him back. He did not want shelter and comfort from her. Only one thing. Have we got that to give him?”
“Well then, I go for my own sake—it is a physical necessity; and I go for hers. She has put it out of her own power to help him. It will ease her a little to know I am trying to reach him in his forlorn disguise.”
“But you were not going to tell her?”
“In words, no. But she will understand. There is a strange clairvoyance between us, as if we were accomplices in a crime!”
Moya reflected silently. This search which Paul had set his heart upon would equally work his own cure, she saw. Nor could she now imagine for themselves any lover's paradise inseparable from this moral tragedy, which she saw would be fibre of their fibre, life of their life. A family is an organism; one part may think to deny or defy another, but with strange pains the subtle union exerts itself; distance cannot break the thread.
They kissed each other solemnly like little children on the eve of a long journey full of awed expectancy.
Mrs. Bogardus stood holding her door ajar as Moya passed on her way downstairs. “You are very late,” she uttered hoarsely. “Is nothing settled yet?”
“Everything!” Moya hesitated and forced a smile, “everything but where we shall go. We will start—and decide afterwards.”
“You go together? That is right. Moya, you have a genius for happiness!”
“I wish I had a genius for making people sleep who lie awake hours in the night thinking about other people!”