They
were revitalized not from within, but from without; and even as his mind
leapt at this explanation he perceived in the sunlight, beyond the
shadowy yew-tree in which he was perched, Esther sitting upon that
hummock of grass where but a moment ago he had himself been sitting.
For a moment, as if to contradict a reasonable explanation of the
strange impression the images had made upon him, Mark supposed that she
was come there for a tryst. This vanished almost at once in the
conviction that Esther's soul waited there either in question or appeal.
He restrained an impulse to declare his presence, for although he felt
that he was intruding upon a privacy of the soul, he feared to destroy
the fruits of that privacy by breaking in. He knew that Esther's pride
would be so deeply outraged at having been discovered in a moment of
weakness thus upon her knees, for she had by now fallen upon her knees
in prayer, that it might easily happen she would never in all her life
pray more. There was no escape for Mark without disturbing her, and he
sat breathless in the yew-tree, thinking that soon she must perceive his
glittering eye in the depths of the dark foliage as in passing a
hedgerow one may perceive the eye of a nested bird.
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