"Why, Percival!" she said and stopped--saw the door wide; and he saw the colour deepen where her colour lay. "Why, Percival, why ever should I suppose it of you?"
He could control his voice no more. The strained note went. He said thickly: "But you'll begin to think it. In time you're bound to--if I let you. And then scorn me. If I just idled here you're bound to scorn me. Any one would--you said it."
Nervous her breathing. "But you--you never could be like that, Percival. I've always thought of you as doing things. Every one thinks it. I have noticed how they do."
All the distress he had suffered earlier in the day was back with him now, joined in fiercest tumult with what caused his heart to knock. He cried "They soon won't!" and cried it on a bitter note that made her go an unthinking step towards what waited her. "Percival, they always will," she said. "I always will, Percival."
The redness went from his face. His own clear voice came back to him. All, all his being braced from storm to his control. He breathed "Dora! Will you?"
The stress that had been his was hers. She found no words; she only nodded--moved her lips for "yes" but made no sound. He had come slowly to the truth, by blundering ways that sometimes brought him near and sometimes went astray. She was suddenly come--and come, not of herself, but of as it were a flame that his voice as he spoke, his ardour as he bent towards her, seemed to communicate. She was suddenly come, was a degree bewildered, wanted even yet some further light. She only nodded.
"Dora, you are going for a long time. I heard you tell--"
"I am to be a year away. It is the last time. It is to finish."
Her face was close to his, her lips a shade apart, her wide eyes lifted to him. Rare, rare he had thought her; perfect he knew her. That mystic thing the night had held, held them mute, magnetised, privy from all the world, alone. They stood so close the air he drew had first caressed her. They stood so close that her young bosom almost told him how she breathed. Slowly, as he were drawn to it, he stooped towards her; steadily, as she were held, she suffered his face to approach. Their lips touched, stayed for a space--smaller, infinitely less, than mind can conceive; wider, immeasurably more, as their joined spirits reckoned time, and rushed through time in bliss of ecstasy, than mind can reckon space.