Presently they came to a spot where the path crossed a little streamlet, and then climbed a few rough steps in a steep bank, and so across a stile at the top.
David ran up, leapt the stile, and waited. But he had time to study the distant course of their walk, as well as the burnt and lime-strewn grass about him, for no Lucy appeared. He leant over the wall, and to his amazement saw her sitting on one of the stone steps below, crying.
He was beside her in an instant. But he could not loosen the hands clasped over her eyes.
'Oh, why did you do it?—why did you do it? I'm not good enough—I never shall be good enough!'
For the first time since their formal kiss he put his arms round her. And as she, at last forced to look up, found herself close to the face which, in its dark refinement and power, seemed to her to-day so far, so wildly above her deserts, she saw it all quivering and changed. Never had little Lucy risen to such a moment; never again, perhaps, could she so rise. But in that instant of passionate humility she had dropped healing and life into a human heart.
Yet, was it Lucy he kissed?—Lucy he gathered in his arms? Or was it not rather Love itself?—the love he had sought, had missed, but must still seek—and seek?
BOOK IV
MATURITY
CHAPTER I
'Daddy!' said a little voice.
The owner of it, a child of four, had pushed open a glass door, and was craning his curly head through it towards a garden that lay beyond.