It
seemed even the most unreasonable, for they had their work in common and
they loved one another. There was no doubting their love. They were
very young and might have to wait, but he could trust her to wait all her
life. He knew dimly that she had been fond of him as a little boy, and
had gone on being fond of him, simply and unconsciously, because it was
not possible for her to forget. She would love him in the same way.
That steadfastness was like a light shining through the mists of her
character--through her sudden fancies, her shadowy withdrawals.
And still he was afraid, and sometimes he suspected that she was afraid
too. It was as though inexorable forces were rising up in both of them,
essentially of them, and yet outside their control, two dark antagonisms
waiting sorrowfully to join issue.
4
It had happened suddenly--not without warning. One little event trod on
the heels of another, rubble skirling down the mountain-side, growing to
an avalanche.
Or, again, Cosgrave might have been the odd, unlikely keystone of their
daily life. He had not seemed to matter much, but now that he had been
torn out the bridge between them crumbled.
It had been a day full of bitterness--of set-backs, which to Robert
Stonehouse were like pointing fingers. They were the outward expressions
of his disorder. He did not believe in luck, but in a man's strength or
weakness, and he knew by the things that happened to him that he was
weakening.
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