"Of course that's plausible, and yet it's radical. Hoover's father was a bishop, and I think Hoover is just a bit narrow from early training. He can't see that lots of people who haven't a vestige of humour are nevertheless worth saving. I admit that saving them will be a thankless task. God won't be able to take very much pleasure in it, but in strict justice he will do it--even if Hoover does regard it as a piece of extravagant sentimentality."
A little later she went in. She left him gazing far off into the night, filled with his message, dull to memory on the very scene that evoked in her own heart so much from the old days. And as she went she laughed inwardly at a certain consternation the woman of her could not wholly put down; for she had blindly hurled herself against a wall--the wall of his message. But it was funny, and the message chained her interest. She could, she thought, strengthen his resolution to give it out--help him in a thousand ways.
As she fell asleep the thought of him hovered and drifted on her heart softly, as darkness rests on tired eyes.
She awoke to the sun, glad-hearted and made newly buoyant by one of those soundless black sleeping-nights that come only to the town-tired when they have first fled. She ran to the glass to know if the restoration she felt might also be seen. With unbiassed calculation the black-fringed lids drew apart and one hand pushed back of the temple, and held there, a tangled skein of hair that had thrown the dusk of a deep wood about her eyes. Then, as she looked, came the little dreaming smile that unfitted critic eyes for their office; a smile that wakened to a laugh as she looked--a little womanish chuckle of confident joy, as one alone speaking aloud in an overflowing moment.
An hour later she was greeting Bernal where the sun washed through the big room.
"Young life sings in me!" she said, and felt his lightening eyes upon her lips as she smiled.
There were three days of it--days in which, however, she grew to fear those eyes, lest they fall upon her in judgment. She now saw that his eyes had changed most. They gave the face its look of absence, of dreaming awkwardness. They had the depth of a hazy sky at times, then cleared to a coldly lucid glance that would see nothing ever to fear, within or without; that would hide no falseness nor yet be deceived by any--a deadly half-shut, appraising coolness that would know false from true, even though they mated amicably and distractingly in one mind.