“Oh, no!” she cried. “No, no! Indeed I know now what is possible and what is not!”
For an instant her eyes searched the rigid lines of his face in astonishment. In their struggle to establish the impossible she had been so far ahead, so greatly the more confident and daring, had tempted him to such heights, scorning every dizzy verge, that now, when she turned quite back from their adventure, humbly confessing it too hard, she could not understand how he should continue to set himself doggedly toward it. Perhaps, too, she trusted unconsciously in her prerogative. He loved her, and she him: before she would not, now she would. Before she had preferred an ideal to the desire of her heart; now it lay about her; her strenuous heart had pulled it down to foolish ruin, and how should she lie abased with it and see him still erect and full of the deed they had to do?
“Come,” he said, “let me take you home, dear,” and at that and some accent in it that struck again at hope, she sank at his feet in a torrent of weeping, clasping them and entreating him, “Oh send her away! Send her away!”
He lifted her, and was obliged literally to support her. Her hat had fallen off; he stroked her hair and murmured such comfort to her as we have for children in their extremity, of which the burden is chiefly love and “Don’t cry.” She grew gradually quieter, drawing one knows not what restitution from the intrinsic in him; but there was no pride in her, and when she said “Let me go home now,” it was the broken word of hapless defeat. They struggled together out into the boisterous street, and once or twice she failed and had to stop and turn. Then she would cling to a wall or a tree, putting his help aside with a gesture in which there was again some pitiful trace of renunciation. They went almost without a word, each treading upon the heart of the other toward the gulf that was to come. They reached it at the Murchisons’ gate, and there they paused, as briefly as possible, since pause was torture, and he told her what he could not tell her before.
“I have accepted the charge of the White Water Mission Station in Alberta,” he said. “I, too, learned very soon after I left you what was possible and what was not. I go as soon as—things can be set in order here. Good-bye, my dear love, and may God help us both.”
She looked at him with a pitiful effort at a steady lip. “I must try to believe it,” she said. “And afterward, when it comes true for you, remember this—I was ashamed.”
Then he saw her pass into her father’s house, and he took the road to his duty and Dr Drummond’s.
His extremity was very great. Through it lines came to him from the beautiful archaic inheritance of his Church. He strode along hearing them again and again in the dying storm.
So, I do stretch my hands
To Thee my help alone;
Thou only understands
All my complaint and moan.
He listened to the prayer on the wind, which seemed to offer it for him, listened and was gravely touched. But he himself was far from the throes of supplication. He was looking for the forces of his soul; and by the time he reached Dr Drummond’s door we may suppose that he had found them.