"I have not thought of it lately."
"You will think of it soon! And that reminds me: why did you go away as you
did the last time you were here--when I wanted to talk with you about the
book?"
Her eyes questioned him imperiously.
"I cannot tell you: that is one of the things you'd better not wish to
understand.
She continued to look at him, and when she spoke, her voice was full of
relief:
"It was the first time you ever did anything that I could not understand: I
could not read your face that day."
"Can you read it now?" he asked, smiling at her sorrowfully.
"Perfectly!"
"What do you read?"
"Everything that I have always liked you for most. Memories are a great deal
to me. Ah, if you had ever done anything to spoil yours!"
Do you think that if I loved a woman she would know it by looking at my
face?"
"You would tell her: that is your nature."
"Would I? Should I?"
"Why not?"
There was silence.
"Let me talk to you about the book," he cried suddenly. He closed his eyes
and passed one hand several times slowly across his forehead; then facing
her but with his arm resting on the back of the seat and his eyes shaded by
his hand he began: "You were right: it is a book I have needed. At first it appeared centuries
old to me and far away: the greatest gorgeous picture I had ever seen of
human life anywhere. I could never tell you of the regret with which it
filled me not to have lived in those days--of the longing to have been at
Camelot to have seen the King and to have served him; to have been friends
with the best of the Knights; to have taken their vows; to have gone out
with them to right what was wrong, to wrong nothing that was right."
The words were wrung from him with slow terrible effort, as though he were
forcing himself to draw nearer and nearer some spot of supreme mental
struggle. She listened, stilled, as she had never been by any words of his.
At the same time she felt stifled--felt that she should have to cry
out--that he could be so deeply moved and so self-controlled.
More slowly, with more composure, he went on. He was still turned toward
her, his hand shading the upper part of his face: "It was not until--not until--afterwards--that I got something more out of
it than all that--got what I suppose you meant. . . . suppose you meant that
the whole story was not far away from me but present here--its right and
wrong--its temptation; that there was no vow a man could take then that a
man must not take now; that every man still has his Camelot and his King,
still has to prove his courage and his strength to all men . . . and that
after he has proved these, he has--as his last, highest act of service in
the world. . . to lay them all down, give them all up, for the sake of--of
his spirit. You meant that I too, in my life, am to go in quest of the
Grail: is it all that?"