“How do you know she was unconscious?” remarked Mr. Penzance.  “You are a very strong man.”

Mount Dunstan’s short laugh was even a little awful, because it meant so much.  He let his forehead drop a moment on to his arms as they rested on the mantelpiece.

“Oh, my God!” he said.  But the next instant his head lifted itself.  “It is the mystery of the world—­this thing.  A tidal wave gathering itself mountain high and crashing down upon one’s helplessness might be as easily defied.  It is supposed to disperse, I believe.  That has been said so often that there must be truth in it.  In twenty or thirty or forty years one is told one will have got over it.  But one must live through the years—­one must live through them—­and the chief feature of one’s madness is that one is convinced that they will last forever.”

“Go on,” said Mr. Penzance, because he had paused and stood biting his lip.  “Say all that you feel inclined to say.  It is the best thing you can do.  I have never gone through this myself, but I have seen and known the amazingness of it for many years.  I have seen it come and go.”

“Can you imagine,” Mount Dunstan said, “that the most damnable thought of all—­when a man is passing through it—­is the possibility of its going?  Anything else rather than the knowledge that years could change or death could end it!  Eternity seems only to offer space for it.  One knows—­but one does not believe.  It does something to one’s brain.”

“No scientist, howsoever profound, has ever discovered what,” the vicar mused aloud.

“The Book of Revelations has shown to me how—­how magnificent life might be!” Mount Dunstan clenched and unclenched his hands, his eyes flashing.  “Magnificent—­that is the word.  To go to her on equal ground to take her hands and speak one’s passion as one would—­as her eyes answered.  Oh, one would know!  To bring her home to this place—­having made it as it once was—­to live with her here—­to be with her as the sun rose and set and the seasons changed—­with the joy of life filling each of them.  She is the joy of Life—­the very heart of it.  You see where I am—­you see!”

“Yes,” Penzance answered.  He saw, and bowed his head, and Mount Dunstan knew he wished him to continue.

“Sometimes—­of late—­it has been too much for me and I have given free rein to my fancy—­knowing that there could never be more than fancy.  I was doing it this afternoon as I watched her move about among the people.  And Mary Lithcom began to talk about her.”  He smiled a grim smile.  “Perhaps it was an intervention of the gods to drag me down from my impious heights.  She was quite unconscious that she was driving home facts like nails—­the facts that every man who wanted money wanted Reuben S. Vanderpoel’s daughter—­and that the young lady, not being dull, was not unaware of the obvious truth!  And that men with prizes to offer were ready to offer them in a proper manner.