"I want you, Nancy," I said. "I have always wanted you. You're more
wonderful to-day than you have ever been. I could find myself--with you."
She closed her eyes. A dreamy smile was on her face, and she lay
unresisting, very still. In that tremendous moment, for which it seemed I
had waited a lifetime, I could have taken her in my arms--and yet I did
not. I could not tell why: perhaps it was because she seemed to have
passed beyond me--far beyond--in realization. And she was so still!
"We have missed the way, Hugh," she whispered, at last.
"But we can find it again, if we seek it together," I urged.
"Ah, if I only could!" she said. "I could have once. But now I'm
afraid--afraid of getting lost." Slowly she straightened up, her hands
falling into her lap. I seized them again, I was on my knees in front of
her, before the fire, and she, intent, looking down at me, into me,
through me it seemed--at something beyond which yet was me.
"Hugh," she asked, "what do you believe? Anything?"
"What do I believe?"
"Yes. I don't mean any cant, cut-and-dried morality. The world is getting
beyond that. But have you, in your secret soul, any religion at all? Do
you ever think about it? I'm not speaking about anything orthodox, but
some religion--even a tiny speck of it, a germ--harmonizing with life,
with that power we feel in us we seek to express and continually
violate."
"Nancy!" I exclaimed.
"Answer me--answer me truthfully," she said....