Page:Quiller-Couch--Old fires and profitable ghosts.djvu/347

Rh "Don't look out there…. this circle of light on the pavement … like a map of the world."

"With only our two shadows on it."

"If it were all the world …" He peered around, searching the darkness. "If there were nothing to concern us beyond, and we could stay always inside it …"

"—With the light shining straight down on us, and our shadows close at our feet, and so small! But directly we moved beyond they would lengthen, lengthen …"

"'Forsaking all other'—that's what the Service says. And what does that mean if we cannot stand apart from all and render account to each other only? I tell you I've made allowances. I didn't make any in the old days, being wrapped up in the shop and the chapel, and you not caring for either. There was fault on my side: I've come to see that."

"I'd liefer you struck me, Willy, instead of making allowances."

"Oh, come, that's nonsense. It seems to me, Annie, there's nothing we couldn't help to mend together. It would never be the same, of course: but we can understand … or at least overlook." In his magnanimity he caught at high thoughts. "This light above us—what if it were the Truth?"

"Truth doesn't overlook," she answered, with a hopeless scorn which puzzled him. "No, no,"