Page:HG Wells--secret places of the heart.djvu/268

256 in the same world with me. I’m not likely to think of anyone else for a very long time.... Later on, who knows? I may marry. I make no vows. But I think until I know certainly that you do not want me any more it will be impossible for me to marry or to have a lover. I don’t know, but that is how I believe it will be with me. And my mind feels beautifully clear now and settled. I’ve got your idea and made it my own, your idea that we matter scarcely at all, but that the work we do matters supremely. I’ll find my rope and tug it, never fear. Half way round the world perhaps some day you will feel me tugging.”

“I shall feel you’re there,” he said, “whether you tug or not....”

“Three miles left to Exeter,” he reported presently.

She glanced back at Belinda.

“It is good that we have loved, my dear,” she whispered. “Say it is good.”

“The best thing in all my life,” he said, and lowered his head and voice to say: “My dearest dear.”

“Heart’s desire—still?”

“Heart’s delight.... Priestess of life.... Divinity.”

She smiled and nodded and suddenly Belinda, up above their lowered heads, accidentally and irrelevantly, no doubt, coughed.

At Exeter Station there was not very much time