Somewhere away in the distance—probably outside “The Unicorn”—some one was playing a cornet. A train crashed by and disappeared, leaving a trail of foul smoke which obscured the sky. The smoke cleared slowly away. I struck another match to light my pipe.
It was quite true. On either side of her cheek a tear had trickled. She was trembling a little, worn out by the emotions of the evening.
There was a moment of silence, unusual for Dalston.
“It’s all very ... perplexin’ and that,” she said quietly.
And then I knew for certain that in that great hour of her happiness her mind was assailed by strange and tremulous doubts. She was thinking of “them others” a little wistfully. She was doubting whether one could rejoice—when the thing became clear and actual to one—without sending out one’s thoughts into the dark garden to “them others” who were suffering too. And she had come out into this little meager yard at Dalston and had gazed through the mist and smoke upwards to the stars, because she wanted peace intensely, and so she sought it within herself, because she knew that real peace is a thing which concerns the heart alone.
And so I left her standing there, and I went my way, for I knew that she was wiser than I.