“I believe that I do. You have come here for strength. You will get it.”
Ruefully enough she answered, “I wish I could believe that.”
“You have it in you already. These great ladies will call it out. I wish you had been here, say, the day before yesterday. They might have helped you.”
“But they did help me,” she said. “They were with me. I remembered what we had talked about before them.”
He nodded his head. “I had intended that you should. I was rightly inspired.”
“Without them,” she went on, “I don't know what I should have done. It seems absurd to say so, but—”
He interrupted. “It's not absurd at all—to you and me. If it's absurd, then Art is pastry-cook-stuff: sugar and white-of-egg. The man who fashioned these things had walked with God. Here are his secrets, revealed to you and me.”
She followed her own thoughts, not his. “I came to—day because I have made up my mind. I wanted them to confirm me—to say that I was right. If you weren't here, I should go up to them and whisper to them, as I've seen women do to the Madonna abroad. I should tell them everything.”
He looked at her keenly. “Do it now. I'll leave you.”
She smiled faintly. “No, don't leave me. I couldn't do it now. But I meant to when I came in.”