Suddenly, however, as he sat there mutely watching her, he found her at his knees, her dear arms around him, her face against his breast.
'Robert, my husband, my darling, it cannot be! It is a madness—a delusion. God is trying you, and me! You cannot be planning so to desert Him, so to deny Christ—you cannot, my husband. Come away with me, away from books and work, into some quiet place where He can make Himself heard. You are overdone, overdriven. Do nothing now—say nothing—except to me. Be patient a little, and He will give you back Himself! What can books and arguments matter to you or me? Have we not known and felt Him as He is—have we not, Robert? Come!'
She pushed herself backwards, smiling at him with an exquisite tenderness. The tears were streaming down her cheeks. They were wet on his own. Another moment and Robert would have lost the only clue which remained to him through the mists of this bewildering world. He would have yielded again as he had many times yielded before, for infinitely less reason, to the urgent pressure of another's individuality, and having jeopardised love for truth, he would now have murdered—or tried to murder—in himself the sense of truth for love.
But he did neither.
Holding her close pressed against him, he said in breaks of intense speech: 'If you wish, Catherine, I will wait—I will wait till you bid me speak—but I warn you—there is something dead in me—something gone and broken. It can never live again—except in forms which now it would only pain you more to think of. It is not that I think differently of this point or that point—but of life and religion altogether. I see God's purposes in quite other proportions as it were. Christianity seems to me something small and local. Behind it, around it—including it—I see the great drama of the world, sweeping on—led by God—from change to change, from act to act. It is not that Christianity is false, but that it is only an imperfect human reflection of a part of truth. Truth has never been, can never be, contained in any one creed or system!'
She heard, but through her exhaustion, through the bitter sinking of hope, she only half understood. Only she realised that she and he were alike helpless—both struggling in the grip of some force outside themselves, inexorable, ineluctable.
Robert felt her arms relaxing, felt the dead weight of her form against him. He raised her to her feet, he half carried her to the door, and on to the stairs. She was nearly fainting, but her will held it at bay. He threw open the door of their room, led her in, lifted her—unresisting—on to the bed. Then her head fell to one side, and her lips grew ashen. In an instant or two he had done for her all that his medical knowledge could suggest with rapid decided hands. She was not quite unconscious; she drew up round her, as though with a strong vague sense of chill, the shawl he laid over her, and gradually the slightest shade of colour came back to her lips. But as soon as she opened her eyes and met those of Robert fixed upon her, the heavy lids dropped again.
'Would you rather be alone?' he said to her, kneeling beside her.
She made a faint affirmative movement of the head, and the cold hand he had been chafing tried feebly to withdraw itself. He rose at once, and stood a moment beside her, looking down at her. Then he went.