She slipped suddenly to her knees as though her soul failed her, wound her arms about the man’s neck, and hid her face upon his shoulder. They kneeled thus for some moments, wrapped in each other’s arms like two children. Neither spoke. It was a merging of their common woe into one deep flux of silent sympathy.
The fall of tears on her cheek roused Joan, like the touch of a child’s hand bestirs a mother. She lifted her head, held the man at arm’s-length, looked in his face with a great flash of womanly tenderness.
“Gabriel.”
“Girl—”
“Weep not for me.”
“You shame me too utterly.”
“Ah no, do not think that of me. God knows, I shall help you by being strong.”
She passed her hand over his forehead, smiled with an infinite wistfulness, lifted up her mouth to his, and kissed him.
“Courage,” she said.
For the first time he looked in her eyes, steadily, yet with an incredulous awe that was not of earth. Had Christ spoken He could not have breathed a diviner love.