No, she could not endure a full revelation of the truth. Bertrand had declared that Mordaunt could not discover what was non-existent, but it was not this that Chris feared. It was something infinitely more terrible, a floating suspicion that might harden into actual fact at any moment.
And so her whole being was concentrated upon avoiding the catastrophe that instinct warned her to be impending. Everything hung upon the keeping of that secret which once had seemed to her so small a thing. It had grown to mighty proportions of late. She did not ask herself wherefore; but once in the night she smiled a piteous little smile at the recollection of Manon, the maid-of-all-work, and her story of the spell that bound all who entered the Magic Cave. She remembered how she had laughed over it; but Bertrand had not laughed. He had been quite grave; she remembered that also. He had even spoken as if he believed in it. For a little her thoughts dwelt upon that night, on the quick confidences he had poured out, on her own consternation over the nature of his enterprise, on the words he had uttered then to comfort her. She had never given them much thought before. To-night, lying by her husband's side, they returned to her, and for the first time she pondered them seriously. He had dismissed ambition and success, even the strife of nations, at a breath. He had been able to do so even then, when he was nearing the summit of his aspirations. "What are they?" he had said. "Only a procession that marches under the windows, only a dream in the midst of a great Reality."
What had he meant by that? she asked herself, and searched her memory for more. It came with a curious vividness, a winged message, straight and sure as an arrow. "We look out above them," he had said, "you and I"--suddenly she heard the very thrill of his voice, and it pierced her through and through--"to the great heaven and the sun; and we know that that is life--the Spark Eternal that nothing can ever quench." Chris did not ask herself the meaning of that. She hid it away in her heart, quickly, quickly, lest seeing she should also understand.
It was very early in the morning when she slipped out of bed, and crept to the open window to watch the stars fade into the dawning. She would have liked to pray, but no prayer occurred to her. And so she knelt quite passive, gazing forth over the dim garden, too tired to think any longer, yet too miserable to sleep. She did not know that her husband's eyes gravely watched her throughout her vigil, and when presently she lay down again she still believed him to be sleeping.