"Oh, I went there first, but after I lay down I suddenly remembered the mice and got up and came away.I'm mortally afraid of mice in the dark; but your lantern will keep them off, will it not?"She smiled at him from the shining circle which surrounded her like a halo, and for a moment he forgot her words in the wonderful sense of her nearness.Around them the night stretched like a cloak, enclosing them in an emotional intimacy which had all the warmth of a caress.As she leaned back against the body of a tree, and he drew forward that he might hold the lantern above her head, the situation was resolved, in spite of the effort that he made, into the eternal problem of the man and the woman.He was aware that his blood worked rapidly in his veins, and as her glance reached upward from the light to meet his in the shadow he realised with the swiftness of intuition that in her also the appeal of the silence was faced with a struggle.
They would ignore it, he knew, and yet it shone in their eyes, quivered in their voices, and trembled in their divided hands;and to them both its presence was alive and evident in the space between them.He saw her bosom rise and fall, her lips part slightly, and a tremor disturb the high serenity of her self-control, and there came to him the memory of their first meeting at the cross-roads and of the mystery and the rapture of his boyish love.He had found her then the lady of his dreams, and now, after all the violence of his revolt against her, she was still to him as he had first seen her--the woman whose soul looked at him from her face.
For a breathless moment--for a single heart-beat--it seemed to him that he had but to lean down and gather her eyes and lips and hands to his embrace, to feel her awaken to life within his arms and her warm blood leap up beneath his mouth.Then the madness left him as suddenly as it had come, and she grew strangely white, and distant, and almost unreal, in the spiritual beauty of her look.He caught his breath sharply, and lowered his gaze to the yellow circle that trembled on the ground.
"But you will be afraid even with the light," he said, in a voice which had grown almost expressionless.
As if awaking suddenly from sleep, she passed her hand slowly across her eyes.
"No, I shall not be afraid with the light," she answered, and moved out into the road.
"Then let me hold it for you--the hill is very rocky."She assented silently, and quickened her steps down the long incline; then, as she stumbled in the darkness, he threw the lantern over upon her side."If you will lean on me I think I can steady you," he suggested, waiting until she turned and laid her hand upon his arm."That's better now; go slowly and leave the road to me.How in thunder did you come over it in the pitch dark?""I fell several times," she replied, with a little unsteady laugh, "and my feet are oh! so hurt and bruised.Tomorrow I shall go on crutches.""A bad night's work, then."
"But not so bad as it might have been," she added cheerfully.
"You mean if I had not found you it would have been worse.Well, I'm glad that much good has come out of it.I have spared you a cold--so that goes down to my credit; otherwise--But what difference does it make?" he finished impatiently."We must have met sooner or later even if I had run across the world instead of merely across a tobacco field.After all, the world is no bigger than a tobacco field, when it comes to destiny.""To destiny?" she looked up, startled."Then there are fatalists even among tobacco-growers?"He met her question with a laugh."But I wasn't always a tobacco-grower, and there were poets before Homer, who is about the only one I've ever read.It's true I've tried to lose the little education I ever had--that I've done my best to come down to the level of my own cattle; but I'm not an ox, after all, except in strength, and one has plenty of time to think when one works in the field all day.Why, the fancies I've had would positively turn your head.""Fancies--about what?"
"About life and death and the things one wants and can never get.
I dream dreams and plot unimaginable evil--""Not evil," she protested.
"Whole crops of it; and harvest them, too.""But why?"
"For pure pleasure--for sheer beastly love of the devilment Ican't do."
She shook her head, treating his words as a jest.
"There was never evil that held its head so high.""That's pride, you know."
"Nor that wore so frank a face."
"And that's hypocrisy."
"Nor that dared to be so rude."
He caught up her laugh.
"You have me there, I grant you.What a brute I must have seemed this morning.""You were certainly not a Chesterfield--nor a Bolivar Blake."With a start he looked down upon her."Then you, too, are aware of the old chap?" he asked.
"Of Bolivar Blake--why, who isn't? I used to be taught one of his maxims as a child--'If you can't tell a polite lie, don't tell any.'""Good manners, but rather bad morality, eh?" he inquired.
