"Didn't you know it?" he said in a low voice.
She tried to answer, turned sharply and faced the windows with blurred eyes that saw only a glimmering sheet of light there.
He stood motionless, looking at her, intent upon the sudden confusion in his own brain, realizing it, trying to explain it, analyze it coolly, calmly account for it.
If it were any emotion resembling love which was so utterly possessing him, he chose to know it, to inform himself as to the real significance of this loss of logical equilibrium, this mental inadequacy which began to resemble a sort of chaos.
Was he in love with this girl? Was it love? Was this what it all had meant—all, from the very beginning, through all its coincidences, accidents, successive steps and stages?
And suddenly a terrible timidity seized him. Suppose she knew what he was thinking about! What would she think? What would she do? Where would her confidence go? What would become of her trust in him? What would happen to her implicit faith in him?
Of one thing he was suddenly and absolutely certain; love had never entered her mind, never lodged in her heart, never troubled that candid gaze, never altered her fearless smile. With all her devotion to him, all her passionate attachment of a child, never had anything as deep—never had any emotion as profound as love disturbed the mystery of depths where dwelt in virginal immaturity the soul of her, "clean as a flame—"
As for himself—where he now stood—whither he was being led by something which was not reason, not intention, he did not seem able to understand.
The light in the room had become too uncertain to paint by; he released his canvas and carried it away behind a tapestry, setting it slanting, face to the stone wall.
The brushes, mediums, palette, he left on the palette table and pushed it into a corner behind a sofa, where nobody was likely to fall over it before he gave brushes and palette to Asticot to clean.