She was not
conscious of the shifting crowd, the lifting of hats, the chatter, the
yapping dogs that ran in and out of women's skirts.
Presently he spoke again. "You believe that you failed?"
Her voice came low. "I know that I failed."
Then he looked at her, and spoke with vehemence. "And what is that to you?
What is, failure in such a cause, to such as you?" But she could not meet
his face, kept hers rigidly to the front.
"The cause," Morosine told her, "is everything, the aim, the loyalty, the
great surrender. Beside this failure is nothing at all. Do you say that
the sapling fails that springs out of a cleft rock and towers--seeking, as
we all seek, the sun, the light in heaven? A gale gathers it up and tears
it out: over it goes, and lies shattered. Is that failure? How can it be
when nothing dies?"
Sanchia, very pale, turned her face to his at last. Her mouth was drawn
down at the corners, to the tragic droop. She almost whispered the words,
"Something did die."
His intuition worked like a woman's, in flashes. He knew immediately what
she meant.
"I know, I know," he said. "You were mistaken. But you never faltered. You
followed a call."
"You tell me," she said, "that there was none.
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