“I won’t leave you alone, Agnes, till it is all over,” said Marise, and this time she kept contempt not only out of her voice, but out of her heart.  She was truly only very sorry for the old woman with her foolish fears.

Agnes blinked and pressed her lips together, the water in her eyes.  “I’m awful glad to hear you say that!” she said fervently.

Marise closed her eyes for a moment.  It had suddenly come to her that this promise to Agnes meant that she could not see Neale alone till after the funeral, tomorrow, when she went back into life again.  And she found that she immensely wanted to see him alone this very hour, now!  And Agnes would be there . . . !

She opened her eyes and saw Neale standing up, his cap in his hand, looking at her, rough and brown and tall and tired and strong; so familiar, every line and pose and color of him; as familiar and unexciting, as much a part of her, as her own hand.

As their eyes met in the profound look of intimate interpenetration which can pass only between a man and a woman who have been part of each other, she felt herself putting to him clearly, piercingly, the question which till then she had not known how to form, “Neale, what do you want me to do?”

She must have said it aloud, and said it with an accent which carried its prodigious import, for she saw him turn very white, saw his eyes deepen, his chest lift in a great heave.  He came towards her, evidently not able to speak for a moment.  Then he took her hands . . . the memory of a thousand other times was in his touch . . .

He looked at her as though he could never turn his eyes away.  The corners of his mouth twitched and drew down.

He said, in a deep, trembling, solemn voice, “Marise, my darling, I want you always to do what is best for you to do.”

He drew a deep, deep breath as though it had taken all his strength to say that; and went on, “What is deepest and most living in you . . . that is what must go on living.”

He released one hand and held it out towards her as though he were taking an oath.

CHAPTER XXV

MARISE’S COMING-OF-AGE

July 23.  Dawn

Even after the old child, Agnes, had been soothed and reassured, over and over, till she had fallen asleep, and the house lay profoundly quiet, Marise felt not the slightest approach of drowsiness or even of fatigue.  She lay down on her bed, but could not close her eyes.  They remained wide open, looking not at a wild confusion of incoherent images as they had the night before, but straight into blackness and vacancy.

It was strange how from the brawling turmoil of impressions which had shouted and cried out to her the night before, and had wrought her to frenzy by their insane insistence, not an echo reached her now.  Her mind was as silent and intent as the old house, keeping its last mute watch over its mistress.  Intent on what?  She did not know.  On something that was waiting for her, on something for which she was waiting.