The strange courage that had been in me was suddenly gone. I felt weak
and friendless. I wanted to cry. I waited and waited till I could bear
it no longer. Then I lifted my eyes desperately, with little hope, to
read in his face what the end should be.
I found him looking at me fixedly—_at_ me, you understand, not through
me to a subject that absorbed him, but at me myself. It was as if he
were seeing me for the first time. No—as if he recognized me at last.
Then the doubts went, and the shame and the loneliness. It made me so
utterly happy, that look on his face. I felt my heart beating fast.
He said then, slowly—I can remember the words, the tone and pitch of his
voice, the very shaping of his mouth as he said it—
“Do you know—it’s strange—you remind me of her. You are very like her.
You are very like Madala Grey.”
The hunger in his voice hurt me. I wanted to put my arms round him and
comfort him. I might have done it, for I knew I was still but half real
to him. But I sat still—only, with such a sense in my heart of a trust
laid upon me, of an inheritance, of a widening and golden future, I said
to him—
“Yes. I know.”