CHAPTER XIII

LITTLE WELLS OF GLADNESS

It was dusk, and she had not seen him.  In the silent Den he stood motionless within a few feet of her, so amazed to find that Grizel really loved him that for the moment self was blotted out of his mind.  He remembered he was there only when he heard his heavy breathing, and then he tried to check it that he might steal away undiscovered.  Divers emotions fought for the possession of him.  He was in the meeting of many waters, each capable of whirling him where it chose, but two only imperious:  the one the fierce joy of being loved; the other an agonizing remorse.  He would fain have stolen away to think this tremendous thing over, but it tossed him forward.  “Grizel,” he said in a husky whisper, “Grizel!”

She did not start; she was scarcely surprised to hear his voice:  she had been talking to him, and he had answered.  Had he not been there she would still have heard him answer.  She could not see him more clearly now than she had been seeing him through those little wells of gladness.  Her love for him was the whole of her.  He came to her with the opening and the shutting of her eyes; he was the wind that bit her and the sun that nourished her; he was the lowliest object by the Cuttle Well, and he was the wings on which her thoughts soared to eternity.  He could never leave her while her mortal frame endured.

When he whispered her name she turned her swimming eyes to him, and a strange birth had come into her face.  Her eyes said so openly they were his, and her mouth said it was his, her whole being went out to him; in the radiance of her face could be read immortal designs:  the maid kissing her farewell to innocence was there, and the reason why it must be, and the fate of the unborn; it was the first stirring for weal or woe of a movement that has no end on earth, but must roll on, growing lusty on beauty or dishonour till the crack of time.  This birth which comes to every woman at that hour is God’s gift to her in exchange for what He has taken away, and when He has given it He stands back and watches the man.

To this man she was a woman transformed.  The new bloom upon her face entranced him.  He knew what it meant.  He was looking on the face of love at last, and it was love coming out smiling from its hiding-place because it thought it had heard him call.  The artist in him who had done this thing was entranced, as if he had written an immortal page.

But the man was appalled.  He knew that he had reached the critical moment in her life and his, and that if he took one step farther forward he could never again draw back.  It would be comparatively easy to draw back now.  To remain a free man he had but to tell her the truth; and he had a passionate desire to remain free.  He heard the voices of his little gods screaming to him to draw back.  But it could be done only at her expense, and it seemed