There was a long, long silence. Irene looked at him, her hand to her breast as if to suppress tumultuous workings. In the second and greater crash of her illusions she had not felt the spasm of horror and revulsion. She had only mourned the desecration of the sun in her heaven. Her idol had been transmuted into clay, and she had seen herself bereft of the god to whom she referred all the promptings of her soul. Her chief sensation had been amazed self-pity, in which her broader sympathies had no part. The moment of utter separation from him brought a flash of insight, and she saw him as he was, a man confessed—erring, high-minded, weak, patching up honour with dishonour, striving after noble ends by base means, a contrast of opposites, a fusion of granite and “a measure of shifting sand, from under the feet of the years.”
“I have made a ghastly failure of life,” he said, “but I can’t live without your love.”
He raised his eyes. The great pain in them, unlike any anguish she had dreamed of, smote her suddenly, and, like a magician’s staff, opened all the fountains of her nature through which her woman’s tenderness gushed forth. She rushed to him, knelt by his side, clinging to him passionately, sobbing and weeping.
“Forgive me, dear, forgive me. All my life and love are yours to help and comfort you.”
The tremendous revelation had come. She, the woman, was strong. He, the man, was weak. It was for her to protect and guide him through life. She felt a thrill with it as she strained him to her heart.
It was the vivid solution of her life’s problem, one diametrically opposed to the processes she had blindly followed. In the pulsating happiness of finding her warm human love for him coursing through her veins, she accepted it with tearful gratitude. The god was lost in the weak, proud man, to whom she represented the infallible and divine. It was for her to lead, for him to follow.
They sat long together, side by side, on this night of shock and reconciliation.
“God help us all who drift,” said Hugh.
“Love will guide, dear,” she answered.
“Who guided her?” he asked, motioning to the paper.