She went towards him--there was now no longer any fear in his nearness. He pushed the chair to the fire, and she sank into it sobbing.
Poor, poor Maurice. Yes, in that final, comprehending pity was the truth. Geoffrey was kneeling beside her. He put his arms around her and she leaned her head on his shoulder as she wept. How different this from the rapture of abandonment that had called to her--to him. What had he not conquered in himself--and her--to do this great thing for her?--to save not only her, but through her, Maurice?
But, though he had conquered, she felt broken.
He did not reply. She knew that he, too, was looking down that vista of long years where they must walk apart.
"More will come. Something like a mother's love."
She knew that he spoke the truth. That vision of Maurice's terror-stricken face--reading her letter--had stabbed to more than pity. The protecting passion that had flung itself between him and the reading had in it a deeper quality. She could not analyze the fiercely defensive tenderness. Presently, when her tears were over, and his arms still around her, they were looking silently into the fire, she said, "I won't disappoint you, Geoffrey."
He hid his face against hers. She felt that his cheek was wet.
For a dizzy moment a greater pity, a fiercer tenderness, rose within her, a passion far other than the maternal passion that was to take her back to Maurice.
His cheek was wet; she clasped him in her arms.
And as they clung together, both felt the pendulum-swing of human emotion that from very excess of height plunges into abysses, the dark of unknown depths. They had not escaped the wrench with fundamental things, the swinging stupor of ecstasy and anguish. Tearless now, and in silence, they clung and kissed each other.
The pendulum swung in natures steadied by conflict; the plunging moment came, went, and, without any conscious volition, left them shuddering from the final and now inevitable victory, but looking again down the long vista. It was mechanically that Geoffrey unlocked his arms, rose, and moved away.
Her little travelling clock ticked, eagerly it seemed, on the mantelpiece.
"The rain has stopped," she said. "We can walk to the station in less than an hour."