She was tightly imprisoned in the skin, but all at once he felt one of her hands work its way out of the warmth of it and lay against his cheek.

It did not move away from his face.

Out of her soul and body there passed through that contact of her hand the confession that made him equal to fighting the world.

For many minutes after that neither of them spoke.

The moan of the wind was growing less and less in the treetops, and once Philip saw a pale break where the clouds had split asunder in the sky.