Night after night she continued, and without an effort.  It was as easy as drawing your breath; it was indeed the breath you drew.  She found that she had no longer to devote hours to Harding Powell, any more than she gave hours to Rodney; she could do his business in moments, in points of inappreciable time.  It was as if from night to night the times swung together and made one enduring timeless time.  For the process belonged to a region that was not of times or time.

She wasn’t afraid, then, of not giving enough time to it, but she was afraid of omitting it altogether.  She knew that every intermission would be followed by a relapse, and Harding’s state did not admit of any relapses.

Of course, if time had counted, if the thing was measurable, she would have been afraid of losing hold of Rodney Lanyon.  She held him now by a single slender thread, and the thread was Bella.  She “worked” it regularly now through Bella.  He was bound to be all right as long as Bella was; for his possibilities of suffering were thus cut off at their source.  Besides, it was the only way to preserve the purity of her intention, the flawlessness of the crystal.

That was the blessedness of her attitude to Harding Powell.  It was passionless, impersonal.  She wanted nothing of Harding Powell except to help him, and to help Milly, dear little Milly.  And never before had she been given so complete, so overwhelming a sense of having helped.  It was nothing ­unless it was a safeguard against vanity ­that they didn’t know it, that they persisted in thinking that it was Milly’s plan that worked.

Not that that altogether accounted for it to Harding Powell.  He said so at last to Agatha.

They were returning, he and she, by the edge of the wood at the top of the steep field after a long walk.  He had asked her to go with him ­it was her country ­for a good stretch, further than Milly’s little feet could carry her.  They stood a moment up there and looked around them.  April was coming on, but the ploughed land at their feet was still bare; the earth waited.  On that side of the valley she was delicately unfruitful, spent with rearing the fine, thin beauty of the woods.  But, down below, the valley ran over with young grass and poured it to the river in wave after wave, till the last surge of green rounded over the water’s edge.  Rain had fallen in the night, and the river had risen; it rested there, poised.  It was wonderful how a thing so brimming, so shining, so alive could be so still; still as marsh water, flat to the flat land.

At that moment, in a flash that came like a shifting of her eyes, the world she looked at suffered a change.

And yet it did not change.  All the appearances of things, their colours, the movement and the stillness remained as if constant in their rhythm and their scale; but they were heightened, intensified; they were carried to a pitch that would have been vehement, vibrant, but that the stillness as well as the movement was intense.  She was not dazzled by it or confused in any way.  Her senses were exalted, adjusted to the pitch.

She would have said now that the earth at her feet had become insubstantial, but that she knew, in her flash, that what she saw was the very substance of the visible world; live and subtle as flame; solid as crystal and as clean.  It was the same world, flat field for flat field and hill for hill; but radiant, vibrant, and, as it were, infinitely transparent.

Agatha in her moment saw that the whole world brimmed and shone and was alive with the joy that was its life, joy that flowed flood-high and yet was still.  In every leaf, in every blade of grass, this life was manifest as a strange, a divine translucence.  She was about to point it out to the man at her side when she remembered that he had eyes for the beauty of the earth, but no sense of its secret and supernatural light.  Harding Powell denied, he always had denied the supernatural.  And when she turned to him her vision had passed from her.

They must have another tramp some day, he said.  He wanted to see more of this wonderful place.  And then he spoke of his recovery.

“It’s all very well,” he said, “but I can’t account for it.  Milly says it’s the place.”

“It is a wonderful place,” said Agatha.

“Not so wonderful as all that.  You saw how I was the day after we came.  Well ­it can’t be the place altogether.”

“I rather hope it isn’t,” Agatha said.

“Do you?  What do you think it is, then?”

“I think it’s something in you.”

“Of course, of course.  But what started it?  That’s what I want to know.  Something’s happened.  Something queer and spontaneous and unaccountable.  It’s ­it’s uncanny.  For, you know, I oughtn’t to feel like this.  I got bad news this morning.”

“Bad news?”

“Yes.  My sister’s little girl is very ill.  They think it’s meningitis.  They’re in awful trouble.  And I ­I’m feeling like this.”

“Don’t let it distress you.”

“It doesn’t distress me.  It only puzzles me.  That’s the odd thing.  Of course, I’m sorry and I’m anxious and all that; but I feel so well.”

“You are well.  Don’t be morbid.”

“I haven’t told my wife yet.  About the child, I mean.  I simply daren’t.  It’ll frighten her.  She won’t know how I’ll take it, and she’ll think it’ll make me go all queer again.”

He paused and turned to her.

“I say, if she did know how I’m taking it, she’d think that awfully queer, wouldn’t she?” He paused.

“The worst of it is,” he said, “I’ve got to tell her.”

“Will you leave it to me?” Agatha said.  “I think I can make it all right.”

“How?” he queried.

“Never mind how.  I can.”

“Well,” he assented, “there’s hardly anything you can’t do.”

That was how she came to tell Milly.

She made up her mind to tell her that evening as they sat alone in Agatha’s house.  Harding, Milly said, was happy over there with his books; just as he used to be, only more so.  So much more so that she was a little disturbed about it.  She was afraid it wouldn’t last.  And again she said it was the place, the wonderful, wonderful place.

“If you want it to last,” Agatha said, “don’t go on thinking it’s the place.”

“Why shouldn’t it be?  I feel that he’s safe here.  He’s out of it.  Things can’t reach him.”

“Bad news reached him to-day.”

“Aggy ­what?” Milly whispered in her fright.

“His sister is very anxious about her little girl.”

“What’s wrong?”

Agatha repeated what she had heard from Harding Powell.

“Oh ­” Milly was dumb for an instant while she thought of her sister-in-law.  Then she cried aloud.

“If the child dies it will make him ill again!”

“No Milly, it won’t.”

“It will, I tell you.  It’s always been that sort of thing that does it.”

“And supposing there was something that keeps it off?”

“What is there?  What is there?”

“I believe there’s something.  Would you mind awfully if it wasn’t the place?”

“What do you mean, Agatha?” (There was a faint resentment in Milly’s agonised tone.)

It was then that Agatha told her.  She made it out for her as far as she had made it out at all, with the diffidence that a decent attitude required.

Milly raised doubts which subsided in a kind of awe when Agatha faced her with the evidence of dates.

“You remember, Milly, the night when he slept.”

“I do remember.  He said himself it was miraculous.”

She meditated.

“And so you think it’s that?” she said presently.

“I do indeed.  If I dared leave off (I daren’t) you’d see for yourself.”

“What do you think you’ve got hold of?”

“I don’t know yet.”

There was a long deep silence which Milly broke.

“What do you do?” she said.

“I don’t do anything.  It isn’t me.”

“I see,” said Milly. “I’ve prayed.  You didn’t think I hadn’t.”

“It’s not that ­not anything you mean by it.  And yet it is; only it’s more, much more.  I can’t explain it.  I only know it isn’t me.”

She was beginning to feel vaguely uncomfortable about having told her.

“And Milly, you mustn’t tell him.  Promise me you won’t tell him.”

“No, I won’t tell him.”

“Because you see, he’d think it was all rot.”

“He would,” said Milly.  “It’s the sort of thing he does think rot.”

“And that might prevent its working.”

Milly smiled faintly.  “I haven’t the ghost of an idea what ‘it’ is.  But whatever it is, can you go on doing it?”

“Yes, I think so.  You see, it depends rather ­”

“It depends on what?”

“Oh, on a lot of things ­on your sincerity; on your ­your purity.  It depends so much on that that it frightens you lest, perhaps, you mightn’t, after all, be so very pure.”

Milly smiled again, a little differently.  “Darling, if that’s all, I’m not frightened.  Only ­supposing ­supposing you gave out?  You might, you know.”

“I might.  But It couldn’t.  You mustn’t think it’s me, Milly.  Because if anything happened to me, if I did give out, don’t you see how it would let him down?  It’s as bad as thinking it’s the place.”

“Does it matter what it is ­or who it is,” said Milly, passionately; “as long as ­” Her tears came and stopped her.

Agatha divined the source of Milly’s passion.

“Then you don’t mind, Milly?  You’ll let me go on?”

Milly rose; she turned abruptly, holding her head high, so that she might not spill her tears.

Agatha went with her over the grey field towards the Farm.  They paused at the gate.  Milly spoke.

“Are you sure?” she said.

“Certain.”

“And you won’t leave go?” Her eyes shone towards her friend’s in the twilight.  “You will go on?”

“You must go on.”

“Ah ­how?”

“Believing that he’ll be all right.”

“Oh, Aggy, he was devoted to Winny.  And if the child dies ­”