Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/374

 'I can believe in God when you are there,' said Graham.

'I believe in Him even when you are not there,' said Marthe. 'Always, at great moments, the sense of a presence has come to me. When my mother killed my father and I found them; when I held her in her frenzies at night; when she died and left me. I feel it bless us now.'

Graham was trembling with grief and pain and adoration. The sense of light was about him, and while he gazed into her eyes he felt himself lifted and sustained on a strength infinitely transcending his own. Marthe's strength? God's strength? What did that matter? Was not the heart of the mystery this flame that she revealed to him in whose light he might find it bliss to die? And as he gazed at it, at that moment, he saw it fall from her face. He felt a shock go through her and heard a far off cry.

The watery wastes were empty. The promontory cut its vast bulk across the sky, shutting out Buissac; but, borne on the wind, beaten by the rain, wavering as a foam-bell wavers on swirling water, the cry had reached them, and he drew away to listen. And Marthe, too, turned her face away and looked towards Buissac.

And in that silent, listening moment Graham felt a vast menace, an abyss of emptiness, poised above them, opening beneath them, and remembered all his terrors. It was as if in that moment Marthe left him. It was the voice of life calling out to them and as she heard it her flame went out.