"It wouldn't be so hard to go and leave her if she were only happy," resumed Owen passionately. "But to think of her living death--to realise what it is to which Ido leave her! THAT is the worst of all. I would give my life to make her happy--and I can do nothing even to help her--nothing. She is bound forever to that poor wretch--with nothing to look forward to but growing old in a succession of empty, meaningless, barren years.
It drives me mad to think of it. But I must go through my life, never seeing her, but always knowing what she is enduring. It's hideous--hideous!""It is very hard," said Anne sorrowfully. "We--her friends here--all know how hard it is for her.""And she is so richly fitted for life," said Owen rebelliously.
"Her beauty is the least of her dower--and she is the most beautiful woman I've ever known. That laugh of hers! I've angled all summer to evoke that laugh, just for the delight of hearing it. And her eyes-- they are as deep and blue as the gulf out there. I never saw such blueness--and gold! Did you ever see her hair down, Mrs. Blythe?""No."
"I did--once. I had gone down to the Point to go fishing with Captain Jim but it was too rough to go out, so I came back. She had taken the opportunity of what she expected to be an afternoon alone to wash her hair, and she was standing on the veranda in the sunshine to dry it. It fell all about her to her feet in a fountain of living gold. When she saw me she hurried in, and the wind caught her hair and swirled it all around her--Danae in her cloud. Somehow, just then the knowledge that I loved her came home to me--and realised that I had loved her from the moment I first saw her standing against the darkness in that glow of light. And she must live on here--petting and soothing Dick, pinching and saving for a mere existence, while Ispend my life longing vainly for her, and debarred, by that very fact, from even giving her the little help a friend might. I walked the shore last night, almost till dawn, and thrashed it all out over and over again.
And yet, in spite of everything, I can't find it in my heart to be sorry that I came to Four Winds. It seems to me that, bad as everything is, it would be still worse never to have known Leslie. It's burning, searing pain to love her and leave her--but not to have loved her is unthinkable. I suppose all this sounds very crazy--all these terrible emotions always do sound foolish when we put them into our inadequate words.
They are not meant to be spoken--only felt and endured.
I shouldn't have spoken--but it has helped-- some. At least, it has given me strength to go away respectably tomorrow morning, without making a scene. You'll write me now and then, won't you, Mrs. Blythe, and give me what news there is to give of her?""Yes," said Anne. "Oh, I'm so sorry you are going--we'll miss you so--we've all been such friends!
If it were not for this you could come back other summers. Perhaps, even yet--by-and-by--when you've forgotten, perhaps--""I shall never forget--and I shall never come back to Four Winds," said Owen briefly.
Silence and twilight fell over the garden. Far away the sea was lapping gently and monotonously on the bar.
The wind of evening in the poplars sounded like some sad, weird, old rune--some broken dream of old memories. A slender shapely young aspen rose up before them against the fine maize and emerald and paling rose of the western sky, which brought out every leaf and twig in dark, tremulous, elfin loveliness.
"Isn't that beautiful?" said Owen, pointing to it with the air of a man who puts a certain conversation behind him.
"It's so beautiful that it hurts me," said Anne softly. "Perfect things like that always did hurt me--I remember I called it `the queer ache' when I was a child. What is the reason that pain like this seems inseparable from perfection? Is it the pain of finality--when we realise that there can be nothing beyond but retrogression?""Perhaps," said Owen dreamily, "it is the prisoned infinite in us calling out to its kindred infinite as expressed in that visible perfection.""You seem to have a cold in the head. Better rub some tallow on your nose when you go to bed," said Miss Cornelia, who had come in through the little gate between the firs in time to catch Owen's last remark.
Miss Cornelia liked Owen; but it was a matter of principle with her to visit any "high-falutin"language from a man with a snub.
Miss Cornelia personated the comedy that ever peeps around the corner at the tragedy of life. Anne, whose nerves had been rather strained, laughed hysterically, and even Owen smiled. Certainly, sentiment and passion had a way of shrinking out of sight in Miss Cornelia's presence. And yet to Anne nothing seemed quite as hopeless and dark and painful as it had seemed a few moments before. But sleep was far from her eyes that night.
