How could he tell that this little
soft being with the quiet unobtrusive manners had noble and great
beauty of action in her anywhere? A few pretty phrases, a few
significant gestures, these were surely a slight foundation to build
so much upon! Was there, then, some absolute communion of thought
between the two of them such as his cousin's story tried to show? And
had their intercourse been running on for years, neither of them aware
of it in the daytime? Was this intimate knowledge due to long
acquaintance? Had her thought been feeding him perhaps since childhood
even?
In the pause of his temporary lunacy he asked himself a dozen similar
questions, but before the sign of any answer came he was off again,
sweeping on outstretched wings among the stars. He drank her in. He
knew. What was the good of questions? A thirsty man does not stop
midway in his draught to ask when his thirst began, its cause, or why
the rush of liquid down his throat is satisfying. He knows, and
drinks. It seemed to Henry Rogers, ordinary man of business and
practical affairs, that some deep river which so long had flowed deep
out of sight, hidden below his daily existence, rose now grandly at
the flood. He had heard its subterranean murmurs often. Here, in the
Den, it had reached his lips at last.
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