“Oh, I’ll try to bear another afternoon with you!”
“Or we might do a theater or a movie?”
“Even that is possible.”
He didn’t know that she was exerting herself to send him away cheerful. When he said soberly, his hand on the door, “You don’t know how much you’ve helped me,” she held up her finger warningly.
“Not so serious! Always cheerful!—that’s the watchword!”
“All right! You may have to say that pretty often.”
Her light laugh, charged with friendliness, followed him down the steps. She had made him forget himself, lifted him several times to heights he had never known before. He was sorry that he had not asked her further about the faith to which she had confessed, her God of the Blue Horizons. The young women he had known were not given to such utterances,—certainly not while playing very creditable golf! Her phrase added majesty to the universe, made the invisible God intelligible and credible. He felt that he could never again look at the heavens without recalling that phrase of hers. It wakened in him the sense of a need that he had never known before. It was as if she had interpreted some baffling passage in a mysterious book and clarified it. He must see her again; yes, very often he must see her.
But on his way home a dark thought crossed his mind: “What would Millicent say if she knew?”