It shook between them, this transparency, with their very breath; it was an exquisite tissue, but stretched on a frame, and would give way the next instant if either so much as breathed too hard.

She held her breath, for she knew by his eyes, the light at the heart of which he couldn't blind, that he was, by his intention, making sure--sure whether or no her certainty was like his.

The intensity of his dependence on it at that moment--this itself was what absolutely convinced her so that, as if perched up before him on her vertiginous point and in the very glare of his observation, she balanced for thirty seconds, she almost rocked: she might have been for the time, in all her conscious person, the very form of the equilibrium they were, in their different ways, equally trying to save.

And they were saving it--yes, they were, or at least she was: that was still the workable issue, she could say, as she felt her dizziness drop.

She held herself hard; the thing was to be done, once for all, by her acting, now, where she stood.
So much was crowded into so short a space that she knew already she was keeping her head.