"She doesn't remember who had been in the room?"
"She vaguely remembers seeing two or three people go in and out—the
Bishop!—Canon Dornal!"
They both laughed. Then Meynell's face set sharply. A sudden recollection shot through his mind. He beheld the figure of a sallow, dark-haired young man slipping—alone—through the doorway of the green drawing-room. And this image in the mind touched and fired others, like a spark running through dead leaves….
* * * * *
When he had gone, Catharine turned to Mary, and Mary, running, wound her arms close round her mother, and lay her head on Catharine's breast.
"You angel!—you darling!" she said, and raising her mother's hand she kissed it passionately.
Catharine's eyes filled with tears, and her heart with mingled joy and revolt. Then, quickly, she asked herself as she stood there in her child's embrace whether she should speak of a certain event—certain experience—which had, in truth, though Mary knew nothing of it, vitally affected both their lives.
But she could not bring herself to speak of it.
So that Mary never knew to what, in truth, she owed the painful breaking down of an opposition and a hostility which might in time have poisoned all their relations to each other.
But when Mary had gone away to change her damp clothes, the visionary experience of which Catharine could not tell came back upon her; and again she felt the thrill—the touch of bodiless ecstasy.