"We have come all the hard way up the heights to infinite joy, to Peace!
Shall we throw ourselves down into the gulf?"…
* * * * *
In the night Falkner woke with a start, putting out his hand to fend off a catastrophe. She was not there by his side! For one moment fear filled his mind, and then as he sprang up he saw her in the faint moonlight, leaning against the post of the veranda, looking out into the night. At his movement she turned.
"The night was too beautiful to sleep through, dearest! I have so much to think about."
She came back to his side and knelt above him, drawing her cloak around her. "See! we are all alone here under the stars." The fog had stolen in from the sea, risen as high as the trees, and lay close over land and ocean. The heavens were cloudless, and the little moon was low. "Those tranquil stars up there! They give us our benediction for the time to come…. We have had our supreme joy—our desire of desires—and now Peace shall enter our hearts and remain there. That is what the night says…. It can never be as it was before for you or me. We shall carry away something from our feast to feed on all our lives. We shall have enough to give others. Love makes you rich—so rich! We must give it away, all our lives. We shall, dearest, never fear."
For the soul has its own sensualities,—its self-delight in pain, in humiliation,—its mood of generosity, too. The penetrating warmth of a great passion irradiates life about it.
"My children, my children," she murmured, "I love them more—I can do for them more. And for dear Mother Pole—and even for him. I shall be gentler—I shall understand…. Love was set before me. I have taken it, and it has made me strong. I will be glad and love the world, all of it, for your sake, because you have blessed me…. Ours is not the fire that turns inward and feeds upon itself!"
"Oh, Margaret, Margaret!—"
"Listen," she murmured, clasping his neck, "you are the Man! You must spread the flame where I cannot. I kiss you. I have eaten of life with you. Together we have understood. Forget me, cease to love me; but always you must be stronger, greater, nobler because you have held me in your arms and loved me. If you cannot carry us upwards, it has been base,—the mere hunger of animals,—my lover! You have made of my weakness strength, and I have given you peace! Pour it out for me in deeds that I may know I have loved a Man, that my hero lives!"
Like a cry of the spirit it rang out into the night between the mist-hidden earth and the silent stars. In the stillness there had come a revelation of life,—the eternal battle of man between the spirit and the flesh, between the seen and the unseen, the struggle infinite and always. Where life is, that must be. And the vision of man's little, misshapen existence,—the incomplete and infinitesimal unit he is,—and also the significance of him,—this material atom, the symbol, the weapon of the spirit, shone forth before them. This the woman had felt in giving herself to him, that the spirit within was freed by the touch of flesh….