She reeled visibly, and steadied herself against one of the pillars of the porch, but she was able to hold out the thin scrap of paper to Wimpole as he moved forwards to catch her. He read it. It was a cable notice through the telegraph office from Brest.
"Your message number 731 Henry Harmon New York not delivered owing to death of the person addressed."
Wimpole read the words twice before their meaning stunned him. When he knew where he was, his eyes were still on the paper, and he was grasping Helen’s wrist, while she stood stark and straight against the pillar of the porch. She lifted her free hand and passed it slowly across her forehead, opening and shutting her eyes as if waking. The porter stared at her from the steps.
"Come," said Wimpole. "Let us go out again. We can’t stay here."
Helen looked at him, only half comprehending. Even in the uncertain light he could see the colour returning to her face, and he felt it in his own. Then her senses came back all at once with her own clear judgment and decision, and the longing to be alone, which he could not understand, as he tried to draw her away with him.
"No, no!" she cried, resisting. "Let me go, please let me go! Please!"
And all her lost youth was in her as she lightly turned and went from him up the steps. Again he stood still, following her with his eyes, but an age had passed, with Harmon’s life, between that time and this.
He understood better, when he himself was alone, walking far on, through the damp wind, by the shore of the lake, past the big railway station, just then in one of its fits of silence, past the wooden piers built out into the lake for the steamers, and out beyond, not counting his steps, nor seeing things, with bent head, and one hand catching nervously at the breast of his coat.
He understood Helen, for he also had need of being alone to face the tremendous contrast of the hour and to digest in secret the huge joy he was ashamed to show to himself, because it was for the death of a man whose existence had darkened his own. Because Harmon was suddenly dead, the sleeping hope of twenty years had waked with deep life and strength. Time and age were rolled away like a mist before the morning breeze, the world was young again, and the rose of yesterday was once more the lovely flower of to-day.