"Wife..." sighed Theophil--(ah! Jenny!) and then a voice that seemed to be neither's, and yet seemed to be the voice of both,--a voice like a dove smothered in sweetness between their breasts,--said, "Let us go deeper into the wood."
Later, when the stars had come, two white faces came glimmering from the innermost chancel of the wood's green darkness. They passed close together, still as phantoms among the trees, and when they came out on to the lane they stood still.
"Theophil," said one voice, "if I should be dying, and I should send for you, will you promise me to come?"
"Isabel," said another voice, "if I should be dying, and I should send for you, will you promise me to come?"
And each voice vowed to the other, and said, "I would come, and I would go with you."
And all these words had once been Jenny's, but they had been Isabel's first.
CHAPTER XIX
PREPARATIONS FOR A FAST AND OTHER SADNESS
As the sharing of a cruel or unworthy secret must be the most terrible of all human relationships, the sharing of a beautiful secret is the most blest. Thus, for the week following this day of days, Theophil and Isabel went about their daily lives with all heaven in their hearts, and, divided though they were, possessed by a mystical certitude of inner union which they felt no extension of space or endurance of time could destroy.