“As you like,” she replied. She thought, looking at the sky above Chancery Lane, how the roof was the same everywhere; how she was now secure of all that this lofty blue and its steadfast lights meant to her; reality, was it, figures, love, truth?
“I've something on my mind,” said Ralph abruptly. “I mean I’ve been thinking of Mary Datchet. We're very near her rooms now. Would you mind if we went there?”
She had turned before she answered him. She had no wish to see any one to-night; it seemed to her that the immense riddle was answered; the problem had been solved: she held in her hands for one brief moment the globe which we spend our lives in trying to shape, round, whole, and entire from the confusion of chaos. To see Mary was to risk the destruction of this globe.
“Did you treat her badly?” she asked rather mechanically, walking on.
“I could defend myself,” he said, almost defiantly. “But what’s the use, if one feels a thing? I won't be with her a minute,” he said. “I’ll just tell her———”
“Of course, you must tell her,” said Katharine, and now felt anxious for him to do what appeared to be necessary if he, too, were to hold his globe for a moment round, whole, and entire.
“I wish—I wish” she sighed, for melancholy came over her and obscured at least a section of her clear vision. The globe swam before her as if obscured by tears.
“I regret nothing,’ said Ralph firmly. She leant towards him almost as if she could thus see what he saw. She thought how obscure he still was to her, save only that more and more constantly he appeared to her a fire burning through its smoke, a source of life.
“Go on,” she said. “You regret nothing———”
“Nothing—nothing,” he repeated.
“What a fire!” she thought to herself. She thought of
