"Derry," I said gently, "I can't go over old ground again. At present—I say at present—I'm staying in the house. I must now decide how much longer I can stay there. But first tell me exactly what it is you propose to do."
"I haven't any intentions at all, sir."
"At present you haven't. You hadn't before, but that didn't last. What is it you want?"
"Only that you shouldn't thrust me back into—that other."
"I can't think beyond that, sir."
"But there will be something beyond that."
He was silent while the Light revolved twice, thrice, then:
"Et revivre pour t'adorer ... like a soft warm sun even in the night," he breathed scarcely audibly. "You can't call it sleeping. Something blessed that you can't see is going on behind it all the time. Something seems to be breathing. That's what happens in the night now. It isn't sleeping; you're too happy to want to go to sleep. Then she smiles. Not like in the toyshop. She didn't smile in the toyshop; that was a different kind of look altogether. She smiled yesterday when we were having tea, but you weren't looking. And twice to-day—twice.... At first I was afraid my painting was going to excite me a bit, upset me. Once or twice it did a little. I didn't want to talk about it much this afternoon for fear of it upsetting me. But everything calms down when she looks and smiles. It's just her being there. There isn't any glass at all; the glass is between us two and everybody else in the world. Painting's perfectly safe with her by me—perfectly safe.... But nothing's safe without. I shall slip again without her now. I felt myself even begin to slip that time you said she was going away. It was frightening.... Don't ask me to try the experiment, sir; it's so horribly risky; but if they were to spring it on me that she was going away I know quite well what would happen. It would be like before; I should have to pack up my traps and disappear again. And that time it would be the end.... But as long as I'm with her it's all clear ahead—the new way—the way I always tried to find and always missed—il est venu le jour——"
He was hardly speaking to me. Little as I could see of his face, I could divine what passed there. After that recent violence, this almost dumb meekness and awaiting my judgment. And because he was not speaking to me, but was communing with his own solitary soul as gravely as he had bent his knee before That which rose above us into the night, I knew that I must end by believing him. At a word I could have sent her away. He had offered to put himself to the test of her departure. That he might be believed he had even offered to risk once more that hideous hiatus in his life.