* * * * *

She had been frightened, stabbed through and through by the look they had interchanged, by the wordless something which had passed between them.  But now she wondered suddenly, passionately, amazedly, if he had really understood all the dagger-like possibilities of their talk.

“Neale,” she challenged him, “don’t you put any limits on this?  Isn’t there anywhere you’d stop out of sheer respect?  Nothing too hallowed by . . .”

“Nothing.  Nothing,” he answered her, his face pale, his eyes deep and enduring.  “It’s lying down, not to answer the challenge when it comes.  How do you know what you have to deal with if you won’t look to see?  You may find out that something you have been trusting is growing out of a poisonous root.  That does happen.  What’s the use of pretending that it couldn’t to you, as to anybody else?  And what’s the use of having lived honestly, if you haven’t grown brave enough to do whatever needs to be done?  If you are scared by the idea that your motherhood may be only inverted sensuality, or if you think there is any possibility that the children would be better off in other hands, or if you think . . . if you think there is any other terrifying possibility in our life here, for God’s sake look into your own heart and see for yourself!  It all sounds like nonsense to me, but . . .”

She snatched at the straw, she who longed so for help.  “Oh, Neale, if you think so, I know . . .”

“I won’t have you taking my word for it!” he told her roughly. “I can’t tell what’s back of what you do.  And you oughtn’t to take my word for it if I tried to.  Nobody on earth can make your decision for you, but you yourself.”  The drops stood out on his forehead as he spoke, and ran down his pale face.

She quivered and was silent for a moment.  Then, “Neale, where shall I get the strength to do that?” she asked.

He looked full in her face.  “I don’t know anywhere to go for strength but out of one’s naked human heart,” he said.

She shrank from the rigor of this with a qualm of actual fear.  “I think I must have something else,” she told him wildly.

“I don’t know,” he returned.  “I don’t know at all about that.  I’m no mystic.  I can’t help you there, dear.  But I know, as well as I know anything on earth, that anything that’s worth having in anybody’s life, his parent-hood, his marriage, his love, his ambition, can stand any honest challenge it can be put to.  If it can’t, it’s not valid and ought to be changed or discarded.”  His gaze on her was immeasurably steady.

She longed unspeakably for something else from him, some warming, comforting assurance of help, some heartening, stimulating encouragement along that stark, bleak way.

* * * * *

Somehow they were standing up now, both pale, looking profoundly into each other’s eyes.  Something almost palpable, of which not a word had been spoken aloud, came and stood there between them, and through it they still looked at each other.  They had left words far behind now, in the fierce velocity of their thoughts.