"It's always the way. We must fight our battles alone,
but we don't have to bear the wounds alone. In the battle you are alone,
but the hand to heal the wounds may be another's. You are a philosopher
--well, what I speak is true, isn't it?"
Virginie had said the one thing which could have stayed the tide of Jean
Jacques' pessimism and broken his cloud of gloom. She appealed to him in
the tune of an old song. The years and the curses of years had not
dispelled the illusion that he was a philosopher. He stopped with his
hand on the door.
"That's so, without doubt that's so," he said. "You have stumbled on a
truth of life, madame."
Suddenly there came into his look something of the yearning and hunger
which the lonely and forsaken feel when they are not on the full tide of
doing. It was as though he must have companionship, in spite of his
brave announcement that he must fight his fight alone. He had been
wounded in the battle, and here was one who held out the hand of healing
to him. Never since his wife had left him the long lonely years ago had
a woman meant anything to him except as one of a race; but in this moment
here a woman had held his hand, and he could feel still the warm palm
which had comforted his own agitated fingers.
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