“‘No, no!  But give me something to make it bearable.’”

“Allah, the compassionate!” sighed Hugh, in ecstasy.  He had never dared hope for all this.  His very being went on tiptoe for fear of breathing too loud.

“We sat there for ages and ages, gazing into the fire, not saying a word.  Then he spoke ... every now and then.  He said: 

“’The horrible thing would have been never to have known you.  Now that I’ve touched you I’m magnetized for life.  I can’t lose you again.’

“‘It isn’t I,’ I told him.  ‘It’s only what you think me.’

“’You are the only creature outside of myself that I ever found myself in,’ he said.  ’And I could look into you like Narcissus until I died.  You are home and Nirvana.  That’s what you are.  When I look at you I believe in God.  You gallantest, most foolhardy, little, fragile thing, you, you’re not afraid of anything.  You trust this rotten life, don’t you?  You expect to find lovely things everywhere, and you will, just because they’ll spring up around your feet.  You’ll save your world like all redeemers simply by being in it.’

“No woman ever had such things said to her as he said to me.  But most of the time we said nothing.  There wasn’t any past or future; there was only the touch of his shoulder and his hands all around mine.  It was like coming in out of the cold; it was like being on a hill above the sea, and listening to the wind in the pines until you don’t know which is the wind and which is you....

“It couldn’t last forever.  After a while something like a little point of pain began worrying my mind.

“‘But there won’t be....  This is good-bye,’ I cried.

“‘Don’t you believe it,’ he said.  ’God Himself couldn’t make us say good-bye again.’  He got up and drew me with him.  It was quite dark now except for the fire, and his eyes ... they were like those of the Djinns who were made out of elemental fire instead of earth.  ’You’ll come to me in the blessed sunshine,’ he said, ’and in music, and in the best impulses of my own soul.  If I were an old-fashioned lover I should promise to wait for you in heaven....  Betty, Betty, I have you in heaven now and forever!’ ...  I felt his cheek on mine.  Then he was gone.  That was all; that was every bit of all.”

“And he had that to live on for the rest of his life.”  Hugh broke the silence under his breath.  “Well, thank God he had something!”

The little woman fumbled in her bag for a handkerchief and shamelessly dried her eyes.  As she moved, a brown object fell from the corner of the couch across her lap.  Hugh held his hand out for the morocco portfolio.

“It seems to have the homing instinct,” he observed; then, abruptly, “Wait a moment; I’m going to call them back.”  He paused, as usual, before his favourite confidant, the window.  “The larger consciousness, the Universal Togetherness,” he muttered.  “I really believe he must have touched it that once.  O Lord! how—­” His spacious vocabulary gave it up.