They were silent a moment over the wonder of it.
"I can't get over it," said Milly, presently. "It's so odd that it should make all that difference. I could understand it if it had worked that way at first. But it didn't. Think of him yesterday. And yet—if it isn't the place, what is it? What is it?"
Agatha did not answer. She wasn't going to tell Milly what it was. If she did Milly wouldn't believe her, and Milly's unbelief might work against it. It might prove, for all she knew, an inimical, disastrous power.
"Come and see for yourself." Milly spoke as if it had been Agatha who doubted.
They turned again towards the house. Powell had come out and was in the garden, leaning on the gate. They could see how right he was by the mere fact of his being there, presenting himself like that to the vivid light.
He opened the gate for them, raising his hat and smiling as they came. His face witnessed to the wonder worked on him. The colour showed clean, purged of his taint. His eyes were candid and pure under brows smoothed by sleep.
As they went in he stood for a moment in the open doorway and looked at the view, admiring the river and the green valley, and the bare upland fields under the wood. He had always had (it was part of his rare quality) a prodigious capacity for admiration.
"My God," he said, "how beautiful the world is!"
He looked at Milly. "And all that isn't a patch on my wife."
He looked at her with tenderness and admiration, and the look was the flower, the perfection of his sanity.