Before she had finished she was sorry she had spoken.  Arnold’s face was suffused with purple.  He put his hand up to his collar and wrenched at it, clenched his fists, and finally, flinging his riding-crop far from him, hid his face in his hands and burst into tears.  “Isn’t it damnable!” he said over and over.  “Isn’t it damnable!”

Sylvia had nothing more to say.  It seemed indeed damnable to her.  She wondered again at Judith’s invincible force of will.  That alone was the obstacle—­no, it was something back of Judith’s will, something which even Arnold recognized; for now, to her astonishment, he looked up, his face smeared like a weeping child’s, and said in a low tone, “You know, of course, that Judith’s right.”

The testimony was wrung out of him.  But it came.  The moment was one never to be forgotten.

Out of her passionate pity was born strength that was not to be denied.  She took his hand in hers, his dry, sick man’s hand.  “Arnold, you asked me to give you a reason why you should get the best you can out of yourself.  I’ll give you a reason.  Judith is a reason.  Austin is a reason.  I’m a reason.  I am never going to let you go.  Judith can’t be the one to help you get through the best you can, even though it may not be so very well—­poor, poor Judith, who would die to be able to help you!  Mother wasn’t allowed to.  She wanted to, I see that now.  But I can.  I’m not a thousandth part as strong or as good as they; but if we hang together!  All my life is going to be settled for me in a few hours.  I don’t know how it’s going to be.  But however it is, you will always be in my life.  For as long as you live,” she caught her breath at the realization of how little that phrase meant, “for as long as you live, you are going to be what you wanted to be, what you ought to have been, my brother—­my mother’s son.”

He clung to her hand, he clung to it with such a grip that her fingers ached—­and she blessed the pain for what it meant.

CHAPTER XLVII

“...  AND ALL THE TRUMPETS SOUNDED!”

They had told her at the farm, the old man and the old woman who had looked so curiously at her, that Mr. Page had gone on up the wood-road towards the upper pasture.  He liked to go there sometimes, they said, to look at the sunset from a big rock that stood in the edge of the white birch woods.  They added, in extenuation of this, that of course somebody had to go up there anyhow, once in a while, to salt the sheep.

Sylvia had passed on, passed the great, square, many-chimneyed house, passed the old-fashioned garden, and struck into the wood-road beyond the bars.  The sun was so low now, almost below the edge of the Notch, that the rays were level and long behind her.  So she had walked, bathed in luminous gold at Versailles, on the day when Austin had first told her that he loved her, on the day she had told him the truth.