She went on, holding him as he held her embraced, pouring herself out in a swift rush of eager utterance:
"Come back and help us readjust values. Everything's changed—everything's altered—since the beginning of the War. We women have found out—even the idlest and the vainest of us—that the things we used to live for really meant nothing! What we have called Society is a box of broken toys. The plays we have laughed or cried at—the books we have read—the music we have gone rabid over—the frocks we have sported—the flirtations we have revelled in—the scandals we have discussed—none of these mean anything, count for anything—weigh anything! Nothing is real but Life—and Love—and Death. Not life like the life we used to know—nor love like the love we talked of. A life of work, and help, and prayer, and hope—and courage—and the kind of love that has wings and doesn't crawl in the mud. Nothing like the Death we used to dodge and blink and dread so, but something nobler. Something that leads through the Gate of the Grave—to God! Don't you see that the War was sent to change us?—don't you see——"
He cried out:
"I shall never see again!" An ugly spasm wrenched his jaw aside. "They think I take it pluckily. But every night I dream it over once more—and the sky is rushing back, and the ground is swirling up—and the Bird is toppling, spinning downwards, in a trail of smoke and fire. I can hear my observer screaming, poor, poor fellow! How I escaped burning I don't know. Then comes the crash!—and the grey void of Nothingness out of which, æons later, I crawl into a blind man's dreadful world. A world that is all sounds and voices and sounds and touches. A world where I must live—and die—in the dark!"
She said in her deep sweet voice, with her velvet cheek pressed against Sherbrand's:
"With me. And suppose you saw me, and could not feel nor hear me?"
She felt him shudder as he answered:
"The thing would be Hell!"
"Well, then, let me try and make the best of it! For both of us, my dear one!" She pressed closer to his breast, magnetising him with her touch, her breath, her presence, summoning all her forces of womanly allurements to charm him from despair. "Couldn't I reconcile my lover to the dark?" she whispered.
"Are you cold, dearest?" he asked. For as the last words left her lips a sharp vibration had passed through her. "You shivered as though you were."