There went through her a sudden deep excitement, a subtle and
mysterious joy. This passion was as distant and as pure as ecstasy.
It swept her, while the white glamour lasted, into the stillness where
the flowering thorn trees stood.
* * * * *
She wondered whether Steven had seen the vision of the flowering thorn
trees. She longed for him to see it. They stood a little apart and her
hand moved toward him without touching him, as if she would draw him
to the magic.
"Steven--" she said.
He came to her. Her hand hung limply by her side again. She felt his
hand close on it and press it.
She knew that he had seen the vision and felt the subtle and
mysterious joy.
She wanted nothing more.
"Say good-night now," she said.
"Not yet. I'm going to walk back with you."
They walked back in a silence that guarded the memory of the mystic
thing.
They lingered a moment by the half-open door; she on the threshold, he
on the garden path; the width of a flagstone separated them.
"In another minute," she thought, "he will be gone."
It seemed to her that he wanted to be gone and that it was she who
held him there against his will and her own.
She drew the door to.
"Don't shut it, Gwenda."
It was as if he said, "Don't let's stand together out here like this
any longer."
She opened the door again, leaning a little toward it across the
threshold with her hand on the latch.
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