He seemed to have forgotten himself in a meditation so deep that on the point of going out she stopped to look at him in surprise.  While she had been speaking he had wandered on the track of the enigma, out of the world of senses into the region of feeling.  What did it matter what she had done, what she had said, if through the pain of her acts and words he had obtained the word of the enigma!  There can be no life without faith and love—­faith in a human heart, love of a human being!  That touch of grace, whose help once in life is the privilege of the most undeserving, flung open for him the portals of beyond, and in contemplating there the certitude immaterial and precious he forgot all the meaningless accidents of existence:  the bliss of getting, the delight of enjoying; all the protean and enticing forms of the cupidity that rules a material world of foolish joys, of contemptible sorrows.  Faith!—­Love!—­the undoubting, clear faith in the truth of a soul—­the great tenderness, deep as the ocean, serene and eternal, like the infinite peace of space above the short tempests of the earth.  It was what he had wanted all his life—­but he understood it only then for the first time.  It was through the pain of losing her that the knowledge had come.  She had the gift!  She had the gift!  And in all the world she was the only human being that could surrender it to his immense desire.  He made a step forward, putting his arms out, as if to take her to his breast, and, lifting his head, was met by such a look of blank consternation that his arms fell as though they had been struck down by a blow.  She started away from him, stumbled over the threshold, and once on the landing turned, swift and crouching.  The train of her gown swished as it flew round her feet.  It was an undisguised panic.  She panted, showing her teeth, and the hate of strength, the disdain of weakness, the eternal preoccupation of sex came out like a toy demon out of a box.

“This is odious,” she screamed.

He did not stir; but her look, her agitated movements, the sound of her voice were like a mist of facts thickening between him and the vision of love and faith.  It vanished; and looking at that face triumphant and scornful, at that white face, stealthy and unexpected, as if discovered staring from an ambush, he was coming back slowly to the world of senses.  His first clear thought was:  I am married to that woman; and the next:  she will give nothing but what I see.  He felt the need not to see.  But the memory of the vision, the memory that abides forever within the seer made him say to her with the naive austerity of a convert awed by the touch of a new creed, “You haven’t the gift.”  He turned his back on her, leaving her completely mystified.  And she went upstairs slowly, struggling with a distasteful suspicion of having been confronted by something more subtle than herself—­more profound than the misunderstood and tragic contest of her feelings.