Page:Dark Hester.djvu/279

She remembered afterwards, as it came back to her in its preciousness, the sacramental significance of their last moments together, but she could remember no words. Her assurance, if assurance it was, her faith, rather, had been conveyed in the look that she had at last lifted towards him, the silence in which their eyes had communed with one another’s. Peace passed from her to him and together they partook of its meaning.

It had been like the symbol of this communion, when, seeing her deadly weariness, he had gone away and found milk and heated it and made her drink before her homeward walk, drinking with her. At the time everything had been so blurred by her exhaustion that she had known only the primitive comfort of silence, warmth and nourishment, that, and a faint amusement at the monotony of her repasts; for she seemed to have spent the intervals of the day in drinking milk, with just this flavour added of the brandy that he, like Hester, found suitable to her case. All was done calmly and concisely, with no flurry of search or overturning of saucepans such as she associated with improvised meals. He brought the jug and glasses on a tray; there were biscuits on a plate and a spoon. It re-