They went on talking, but Stella, in a rapture of vision, heeded them not. Herold, who stood quite close to her, was silent. She held his hand, and gripped it almost convulsively. John, with rare observation, noticed that her knuckles were white. Her face was set in an agony of adoration too poignant for speech. John, curiously sensitive where Stella was concerned, realized that these two hand in hand were close together on a plane of feeling too high for the profane. With a little movement of deprecation which neither Herold nor Stella perceived, he pushed the others toward the door and, following them out of the room, closed it behind them.
“Better leave her alone with Walter,” said he.
“Quite so,” said Sir Oliver. “Just what I told you, Julia. We must let her go slow for a bit and not excite her.”
“I don't remember you ever saying anything of the kind,” retorted Lady Blount. “It was Walter.”
“Well, Oliver agreed with him, which comes to the same thing,” said John, acting peacemaker.
But they wrangled all down the corridor, and when the two men were left alone, Sir Oliver shook his head.
“A trying woman, John; very trying.”
Meanwhile Stella and Herold remained for a long time in the quiet room without the utterance of a word. As soon as the others went, her grasp relaxed. Herold drew a chair gently to her side and waited patiently for her to speak; for he saw that her soul was at grips with the new glory of the earth. At last a quivering sigh shook her, and she turned her wet eyes away from the window and looked at him with a smile.
“Well?” said he.
“I feel that it is all too beautiful.”