The Necromancers

They stood here together now in a spiritual garden, of which this lovely morning was no more than a clumsy translation into another tongue. There stirred an air about them which was as wine to the soul, a coolness and clearness that was beyond thought, in a radiance that shone through all that was bathed within it, as sunlight that filtered through water. She perceived then that the experience had been an initiation for them both, that here they stood, one by the other, each transparent to the other, or, at least, he transparent to her; and she wondered, not whether he would see it as she did, for of that she was confident, but when. For this space of silence she perceived him through and through, and understood that perception was everything. She saw the flaws in him as plainly as in herself, the cracks in the crystal; yet these did not matter, for the crystal was crystal....

So she waited, confident, until he should understand it too.

"But that is only one fraction of what is in my mind--" He broke off.

Then for the first time since she had opened her eyes just now her heart began to beat. That which had lain hidden for so long--that which she had crushed down under stone and seal and bidden lie still--yet that which had held her resolute, all unknown to herself, through the night that was gone--once more asserted itself and waited for liberation.

"Yet how dare I--" began Laurie.

Again she glanced at him, terrified lest that which was in her heart should declare itself too plainly by eyes and lips; and she saw how he still looked across the garden, yet seeing nothing but his own thought written there against the glory of sky and leaf and grass. His face caught the splendor from the east, and she saw in it the lines that would tell always of the anguish through which he was come; and again the terror in her heart leapt to the other side, in spite of her confidence, and bade her fear lest through some mistake, some conventional shame, he should say no more.

Then he turned his troubled eyes and looked her in the face, and as he looked the trouble cleared.

"Why--Maggie!" he said.

Chapter 19 Epilogue "The worst of it all is," said Maggie, four months later, to a very patient female friend who adored her, and was her confidante just then--"the worst of it is that I'm not in the least sure of what it is that I believe even now."