“What do you think of me as?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she considered.  “You are unlike any person I have ever known.  It is curious that I cannot now even think of St. John’s as a church.  You have transformed it into something that seems new.  I’m afraid I can’t describe what I mean, but you have opened it up, let in the fresh air, rid it of the musty and deadening atmosphere which I have always associated with churches.  I wanted to see you, before I went away,” she went on steadily, “and when Eleanor mentioned that you were coming to her house to-night, I asked her to invite me.  Do you think me shameless?”

The emphasis of his gesture was sufficient.  He could not trust himself to speak.

“Writing seemed so unsatisfactory, after what you had done for me, and I never can express myself in writing.  I seem to congeal.”

“After what I have done for you!” he exclaimed:  “What can I have done?”

“You have done more than you know,” she answered, in a low voice.  “More, I think, than I know.  How are such things to be measured, put into words?  You have effected some change in me which defies analysis, a change of attitude,—­to attempt to dogmatize it would ruin it.  I prefer to leave it undefined—­not even to call it an acquisition of faith.  I have faith,” she said, simply, “in what you have become, and which has made you dare, superbly, to cast everything away. . .  It is that, more than anything you have said.  What you are.”

For the instant he lost control of himself.

“What you are,” he replied.  “Do you realize—­can you ever realize what your faith in me has been to me?”

She appeared to ignore this.

“I did not mean to say that you have not made many things clear, which once were obscure, as I wrote you.  You have convinced me that true belief, for instance, is the hardest thing in the world, the denial of practically all these people, who profess to believe, represent.  The majority of them insist that humanity is not to be trusted. . .”

They had reached, in an incredibly brief time, the corner of Park Street.

“When are you leaving?” he asked, in a voice that sounded harsh in his own ears.

“Come!” she said gently, “I’m not going in yet, for a while.”

The Park lay before them, an empty, garden filled with checquered light and shadows under the moon.  He followed her across the gravel, glistening with dew, past the statue of the mute statesman with arm upraised, into pastoral stretches—­a delectable country which was theirs alone.  He did not take it in, save as one expression of the breathing woman at his side.  He was but partly conscious of a direction he had not chosen.  His blood throbbed violently, and a feeling of actual physical faintness was upon him.  He was being led, helplessly, all volition gone, and the very idea of resistance became chimerical . . . .

There was a seat under a tree, beside a still lake burnished by the moon.  It seemed as though he could not bear the current of her touch, and yet the thought of its removal were less bearable . . .  For she had put her own hand out, not shyly, but with a movement so fraught with grace, so natural that it was but the crowning bestowal.