“Let us face that, Cornelia....”
“But Tom:—in what you said—that is faith of a sort. You spoke of a wilderness to go through. Of a way. It must lead somewhere. There must be something else?”
“For us?”
“Perhaps not for us.”
“I should like,” Tom pondered, “to have some Church in which to perform a service for my father.”
She looked at him close. His head was down. She took his face in her hands and touched his shut eyes with her lips.
“Dear Tom! Don’t I help?”
There was a great hope in her. If she could find him again: hold him again! Tom, her first child....
He was searching her with eyes her lips had opened.
Her thoughts ran on. Dimly she felt the peril in her thoughts, running along.... No, Tom was not her child. Tom, no longer. He was like her. It was true. Only, he would not accept. She knew the wilderness of life stretched mountainously far beyond where her feet could bring her. She knew the truth for her in what Tom had said. She had hoped, not for herself, but for him. She had hoped falsely. They were one—they were one. For there was another who was so infinitely more, that they were nothing.