Part 157

Later Warner bent toward Philippa:

"You are enchanting in that filmy turquoise blue affair."

"Isn't it a darling? Peggy would make me wear it. It's hers, of course.... Do I please you?"

"Did you ever do anything else, Philippa?"

She colored, looked up at him confused, and laughed:

"Oh, yes," she said, "I have annoyed you too, sometimes. Do you remember when I ran away from Ausone and told you about it in the meadow by the river? Oh, you were very much annoyed! You need not deny it. I realize now how much annoyed you must have been----"

"Thank God you did what you did," he said under his breath.

"What else could I do?"

"Nothing.... I must have been blind, there in Ausone, not to understand you from the first moment. And I must have been crazy to have gone away and left you there.... When I think of it, it makes me actually ill----"

"Jim! You didn't know."

"I should have known. Any blockhead ought to have understood. That was the time I should have heard the knocking of opportunity! I was deaf. That was the time I should have caught a glimpse of that clean flame burning. I seemed to know it was there--words are cheap!--but my eyes were too dull to perceive a glimmer from it!"

"Jim! You saw a girl with painted lips and cheeks insulting the sunlight. How could you divine----"

"I couldn't; I didn't. I was not keen enough, not fine enough. Yet, that was the opportunity. That was the moment when I should have comprehended you--when I should have stood by you--taken you, held you against everybody, everything---- Good God! I went away, smug as any Pharisee, and with a self-satisfied smile left you on the edge of hell--smiling back at me out of those grey, undaunted eyes----"

"Please! You were wonderful every minute from the beginning--every minute--all through it, Jim----"

"You were! I know what I was. Halkett knows, too. I was not up to the opportunity; I did not measure up to the chance that was offered me; I was not broad enough, fine enough----"

"What are you saying!--When you know how I feel--how I regard you----"

"How can you regard me the way you say you do?"

"How can I help it?" She looked down at her glass, touched the slender stem absently.

"Out of all the world," she said under her breath, "you alone held out a comrade's hand. Does anything else matter? ... Think! You are forgetting. Remember! Picture me where I was--as I was--only yesterday! Look at me now--here, beside you.--here under this roof, among these people--and the taste of their salt still keen in my mouth! Now, do you understand what you have done for me--you alone? Now, do you understand what I--feel--for you?--For you who mean not only life to me, but who have made possible for me that life which follows death?"

Her cheeks flushed; she turned breathlessly toward him.

"I tell you," she whispered, "you have offered me Christ, as surely as He has ever been offered at any communion since the Last Supper! ... That is what you have done for me!"

*CHAPTER XXXIV*

Dinner was ended.

Gray had retired to his room, persuaded by Madame de Moidrey, who bribed him by promising to read to him when he was tired of talking shop to Captain Halkett.

Sister Eila had returned to the east wing, which was convenient to her business as well as to her devotions.

Also, she had need of Father Chalus, who had come all the way from Dreslin on foot. For it was included in the duty of the parish priest to confess both Sister Eila and Sister Felicite; only the sudden perils and exigencies of home duties in Dreslin had detained him since the war broke out.

He was old, lean, deeply worn in the service of the poor--a white-haired man who looked out on the world through kindly blue eyes dimmed by threescore years of smoky candlelight and the fine print of breviaries--a priest devotedly loved in Dreslin, and by the household of the Chateau, and by every inhabitant of the scattered farms composing the little hamlet called Sais.

It appeared that Sister Eila had great need of Father Chalus, for they had gone away together, into the eastern wing of the house. And the Countess, noticing their departure, smiled to herself; for, like everybody else, she was skeptical regarding the reality of any sins that Sister Eila might have to confess.