“But I have wanted to speak,” said Howard, “simply because I did not want you to think that it wasn’t in my mind—­that I had cast it all lightly away.  I haven’t tried to force myself into any belief about it—­it’s a mystery—­but it has grown into my mind somehow, and become real; and I do feel more and more that there is something very true and great about it, linking us with a life beyond.  It does seem to me life, and not silence; love, and not emptiness.  It has not come in between us, as I feared it might—­or rather it has come in between us, and seems to be holding both our hands.  I don’t say that my reason tells me this—­but something has outrun my reason, and something stronger and better than reason.  It is near and dear:  and, dearest, you will believe me when I say that this isn’t said to please you or to woo you—­I wouldn’t do that!  I am not in sight of the reality yet, as you have been; but it is a reality, and not a sweet dream.”

Maud looked at him, her eyes brimming with sudden tears.  “Ah, my beloved,” she said, “that is all and more than I had hoped.  Let it just stay there!  I am not foolish about it, and indeed the further away that it gets, the less I am sure what happened.  I shall not want you to speak of it:  it isn’t that it is too sacred—­nothing is too sacred—­but it is just a fact I can’t reckon with, like the fact of one’s own birth and death.  All I just hoped was that you might not think it only a girl’s fancy; but indeed I should not have cared if you had thought that.  The truth—­that is what matters; and nothing that you or I or anyone, in any passion of love or sorrow, can believe about the truth, can alter it; the only thing is to try to see it all clearly, not to give false reasons, not to let one’s imagination go.”

“Yes, yes,” said Howard, “that’s the secret of love and life and everything; and yet it seems a hard thing to believe; because if it were not for your illusions about me, for instance—­if you could really see me as I am—­you couldn’t feel as you do; one comes back to trusting one’s heart after all—­that is the only power we have of reading the writing on the wall.  And yet that is not all; it is possible to read it, to spell it out; but it is the interpretation that one needs, and for that one must trust love, and love only.”

They went back to the house in a happy silence; but Maud slipped out again, and went to the little churchyard.  There behind the chancel, in a corner of the buttress, was a little mound.  Maud laid a single white flower upon it.  “No,” she said softly, as if speaking in the ear of a child, “no, my darling, I am not making any mistake.  I don’t think of you as sleeping here, though I love the place where the little limbs are laid.  You are awake, alive, about your business, I don’t doubt.  I’d have loved you, guarded you, helped you along; but you have made love live for me, and that, and hope, are enough now for us both!  I don’t claim you, sweet; I don’t even ask you to remember and understand.”