Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/373

 head to hers, pressing it against her cold, wet cheek. 'Do you remember, in the garden yesterday?' she said. 'When you asked me to love you, I was silent. Shall I tell you why I was silent all that time? It was like an hallucination that came into my mind. A little boy; our child. If I loved you as you asked there might be a child to make the meaning of my life—even after you had left me. I seemed to see him running up the garden path before us there; very young; with ruffled hair, and eyes like yours. Only his were not lonely eyes; but happy, for he was with his mother. It was like an hallucination.—I saw him turn his face to smile at us. And then I saw that it must never be. He would have been a disinherited child; like me. An outcast. It was only a dream. I had not to struggle. But while it lasted it kept me silent.'

'My angel! My saint!' Graham whispered.

She had kept her face pressed close to his while she told her dream and she was silent for a moment while the water lapped up to their feet. 'No; not an angel,' she said then. 'Not a saint. Saints do not long for human love as I have longed. I have had desires as wild, as desperate, as those of any woman. You must know me as I am. Not a saint. But it has not all been that. I have had other longings.' She drew from him to look at him again. The rain streamed like tears over her face. It was as if already the dividing waters were veiling her from him. Yet light came to him from her. 'Do you believe in God?' she said. 'Can you feel, before we die, that you believe in God?'