Rachel had kept her hold on Emil. Now once more she looked at him with a smile that expressed more love than she had ever shown him before. Such complete, such utter tenderness, he had never dreamed eyes could hold. And yet in those soft depths so earthly-sweet, he saw renunciation shining through devotion.
He blanched.
In a voice in which there was a tremour she could not control, Rachel spoke of his work and of herself as watching his progress with eagerness.
"For I long, I long more than you can realize to have you make the best possible use of your life. I have set my hopes on you, such high hopes, Emil; and you will not disappoint me."
Finally, panting a little but with electrical energy, with exquisite passionateness, she spoke of the open vision of love. "It is," she said, letting her eyes dwell wistfully in his, "the forgetting of ourselves and—and the abandonment of our self-seeking. This is the soul's way out. And it is the only way out," she insisted.
At first he did not understand, but gradually as he listened, helpless in his grief, her words opened out before him like a pathway that led somewhere into peace.
He looked down at her, his eyes flaming as if all his life had centralized and focused within them. Then he bent and laid his forehead on her arm.
What with weak souls requires time, even long years, powerful natures achieve at once. In the silence Emil's oath was fulfilled.
Summoning Annie, Rachel kissed her; and the other, with timid impulsiveness, slipped a little hand in that of her husband. So they left Rachel. But at the door they turned. She was still gazing after them with a mute, almost mystic concentration. Meeting their look, however, she suddenly smiled and in her eyes was the splendour of some newly-discovered truth.
Something she had long wished for had been gained. She felt a sense of supreme restfulness and this sense deepened and increased even as she lent an ear to the sound of the wheels on the gravel, those wheels that were carrying from her, through the stillness of the morning world, the two who had loved her wildly and whom she had loved.