His own mind, however, all the time was full of charging visions.  He kept thinking of the month just past and of the amazing changes it had brought into his thoughts.  He realized, too, now that Mr. Skale was away, something of the lonely and splendid courage of the man, following this terrific, perhaps mad, ideal, day in day out, week in week out, for twenty years and more, his faith never weakening, his belief undaunted.  Waves of pity, too, invaded him for the first time—­pity for this sweet girl, brought up in ignorance of any other possible world; pity for the deaf old housekeeper, already partially broken, and both sacrificed to the dominant idea of this single, heaven-climbing enthusiast; pity last of all for himself, swept headlong before he had time to reflect, into the audacious purpose of this violent and headstrong super-man.

All manner of emotions stirred now this last evening in his perplexed breast; yet out of the general turmoil one stood forth more clearly than the rest—­his proud consciousness that he was taking an important part in something really big at last.  Behind the screen of thought and emotion which veiled so puzzlingly the truth, he divined for the first time in his career a golden splendor.  If it also terrified him, that was only his cowardice....  In the same way it might be splendid to jump into Niagara just above the falls to snatch a passing flower that seemed more wonderful than any he had seen before, but—!

“Miriam, tomorrow is my last day,” he said suddenly, catching her grey eyes upon him in the middle of his strange reflections.  “Tonight may be my last night in this house with you.”

The girl made no reply, merely looking up and smiling at him.  But the singing sensation that usually accompanied her gaze was not present.

“That was very nearly—­a discord,” she observed presently, referring to his remark.  “It was out of tune!” And he realized with a touch of shame what she meant.  For it was not true that this was his last evening; he knew really that he would stay on and that Mr. Skale would accept him.  Quick as a flash, with her simple intuition, she felt that he had said this merely to coax from her some sign of sympathy or love.  And the girl was not to be drawn.  She knew quite well that she held him and that their fate, whatever it might be, lay together.

The gentle rebuke made him silent again.  They sat there smiling at one another across the table, and old Mrs. Mawle, sitting among the shadows at the far end of the room, her hands crossed in front of her, her white evening cap shining like a halo above her patient face, watched them, also smiling.  The rest of the strange meal passed without conversation, for the great silence that all day had wrapped the hills seemed to have invaded the house as well and laid its spell upon every room.  A deep hush, listening and expectant, dropped more and more about the building and about themselves.