Chapter XIII: Part 13

"_Ho-o-o-g! Ho-o-o-g!_" came the long-drawn, minor wail of a negro-voice calling the swine from the mountain for their evening feed.

Rosa went off down the hill, with Bobby trotting at her side. Once the little fellow looked back--only once. His dignity forbade that he should be thought regretful. And "Muvvah" had promised to come and roast chestnuts for him before his bedtime.

"Now for a brisk walk!" said Sophy. "Let's strike into the woods at random and go a little way up the mountain--not far--I must be back to roast those chestnuts before Bobby's bedtime."

"You never break your word to him, do you?" said Loring, as they plunged into the golden depths that seemed aglow with stored sunlight.

"No. Never. I'd rather break my word to ten grown-ups than to one child."

They went on in silence for some yards, the dried leaves ruffling almost to their knees in places. Then Loring said:

"If you once gave your word you wouldn't break it to child or grown-up."

"I don't know.... I've never been tested."

"I know."

"Thanks. But you shouldn't get into the habit of idealising people. You'll end as a cynic if you do."

Her tone was pleasantly mocking.

Loring said quietly:

"I've never idealised but one person in my life."

"Well ... perhaps that's being a little _too_ cautious."

"Caution has nothing to do with it. Such things come or they don't come."

"Yes ... perhaps they do. Ah! Wild grapes! What beauties!"

She stood gazing up at the little clusters of purple-black fox-grapes that hung against the arch of yellow leaves overhead. The vine had swung itself in great loops about a dogwood tree. The grapes were like a delicate design of wrought iron work against the gilded background of autumn leaves. But they hung high--out of reach. Loring caught at them with the handle of his riding-crop. Some of the ripe, purplish beads pattered about them.

"No--no! You can't get them that way," said Sophy. "They're too ripe."

"Wait.... I'll have a go for them this way," said Loring.

He grasped a bough of the tree in either hand, shook it to assure himself that it was equal to his weight, then swung himself up into its crotch. By standing with an arm about the main stem, he could reach the bunches easily on either side. Sophy held out the lap of her skirt.

"You _are_ a nice playmate!" she called up to him, smiling.

He tossed down bunch after bunch from where he stood. Then, seating himself sideways on one of the larger boughs, gathered all that were within reach. His bare head, with its clustered, red-brown hair, looked quite wonderful in the setting of golden leaves and iron-blue grapes.

"Forgive me...." said Sophy. "But I _must_ tell you.... You look like the young Dionysus--with those bunches of grapes hanging all about you."

"Well, that's odd," said Loring; "but from here you look to me like Ariadne." He thanked the gods that he had not forgotten all his mythology. "I ask nothing better than to give you a crown of stars. I believe that's what Dionysus gave Ariadne ... when she became his wife."

Sophy laughed.

"You dear boy," said she. "That was very quick of you. And I like you for conquering your evil temper so nicely. You never had a sister, had you?"

"Why! Are you thinking of offering to be a sister to me?"

"Not at all. I was only thinking that you wouldn't be so 'techess,' as the darkies say, if you'd had a nice, blunt sister to tease you when you were young--that is, younger than you are now," she ended cruelly.

Loring swung himself down beside her.

"The atrocious crime of being a young man!" he said, looking into her eyes boldly and somewhat mockingly, in his turn. "It seems hard for you to forgive me that."

Sophy was a trifle disconcerted.

"You are so easy to tease ... it's a temptation," she said rather lamely.

Loring replied with apparent irrelevance.

"I believe the Brownings are the accepted standard of married bliss, aren't they?"

"Why--yes--I believe they are," admitted Sophy.

"Very well. And do you happen to remember that Elizabeth Barrett was some years older than Robert Browning!"

Sophy was annoyed to feel herself colouring.

"Yes, I know that," she said coldly.

Loring kept his eyes on her. She was eating the little fox flavoured grapes as she walked beside him--very deliberately, one at a time.

"What I find so peculiarly interesting about it," continued Loring, his voice shaken, his heart racing, "is that the difference in their ages was even more than the difference in ours."

Sophy threw aside the bunch of grapes with an impetuous movement. She turned, looking him full in the face. She was very pale now and her eyes shone black. She had not foreseen any such sudden climax as all this.

"Don't ... don't spoil it...." she said vehemently, "don't spoil our pleasant friendship.... I beg of you not to do it."

They stood facing each other, shut alone into the great gold temple of the woods. Loring's beautiful bold eyes were black also. He, too, was white. The pent up passion of his worshipping love for her, that had all the unreasoning fire of a convert's fanaticism, burnt his lips with words. He had not meant to speak. Five minutes ago nothing had been further from his thoughts than the outburst, which now shook him with its violent suddenness.

"You can't stem the high tide with a straw...." he said low and breathless. "Do what you will with me.... I love you.... I more than love you.... I worship you.... I adore you.... Break me if you like.... Snap my life in two.... Throw away the broken bits.... But I worship you.... I worship you!"

He dropped suddenly to his knee on the brown leaves; caught the hem of her clay-stained skirt to his lips. He was past all self-consciousness. He had no dread of seeming ridiculous. Indeed it did not occur to him that he could be ridiculous. Young love has no sense of humour. His white, intense face looked up at her amazingly beautiful--the face of a wood-god kindled with awed passion for some skyey deity. And this sheer beauty of his kept Sophy also from seeing anything absurd in his kneeling there to kiss the soiled hem of her skirt. Supreme beauty, like supreme love, is never ridiculous. The gods wept over Icarus tumbling from his sire's chariot in mid-heaven. They would have tittered had it been lame Vulcan sprawling after his whirling hammer through the gulfs of ether. In the few seconds that Sophy stood transfixed, gazing down into that exalted young face, she understood how the legend of the moon's white stoop to Endymion had been invented. Not imagination so much as material beauty had been the source of the Greek myths. The artist and the poet in her ranged themselves on Loring's side. Her first impulse of anger was replaced by a sad tenderness. She forgot the Morris Loring of everyday in this Endymion of a moment. She forgot even that she had called him like Endymion "in the sulks" only a short while ago. This youth, with the white flame of worship quivering up from his heart's altar and lighting the antique mask of his ardent face--with his awed, yet eager eyes burning upon hers--this was a different thing--one quite new to her. She was startled by the throe of pitiful regret that seized her. If only she had been different herself ... a young virgin ready to receive this outpouring of virginal love.... What miracles would have enfolded them ... what wonders of dawn-time ecstasy. She had been mistaken. A face so beautiful could be only the symbol of a lovely soul. And this soul was gazing at her from the timid passion of the dark eyes, no longer bold, but infinitely, touchingly imploring. In continuous, swift flashes, like the luminous particles from radium, these thoughts showered from her mind, as she stood gazing down at him.

"I've heard of it.... I never believed.... Now I believe..." he was stammering. "My soul's in your body.... Your beautiful body is more than any soul to me.... I pray to you.... My soul in you prays to you...." He caught up a bit of leafy clay that had adhered to her foot, and pressed that also to his lips. "See...." he stammered on, "the dirt from your shoe.... That's how I love you...."

And even this act did not make him seem ridiculous. But Sophy caught his wrist, holding back his hand from his lips that trembled into a white, half-smile.

"My dear...." she said, her own voice shaken. "My dear boy.... Please...."

She felt her words very stupid--inane.

"Come...." she said, pulling at the strong wrist to make him regain his feet. He yielded to her touch and rose, standing tall and quivering before her.

"Won't you even let me worship you?" he asked in a smothered voice.

"My dear, no ... be reasonable...."

It seemed to Sophy that she had never been at the mercy of such banalities as her mind now offered.

He stared, his lip curling.

"Reasonable!"

"I mean...." Fitting words would _not_ come to her. "You forget...." she said confusedly.

"What ... what do I forget?"

"My life ... what is past.... My life is over ... that part of life...."

"_Your_ life?... _Over?_..." He gazed at her so that her eyes wavered from his. She could not help this. It distressed her to be standing there before him in her short skirt, bare-headed, with eyes that would not keep steady. She felt that he had the advantage of her out there in those wide, still aisles of gold with their groining of dark branches. It was as if he had her far from home, in his own haunts. The glowing forest sustained him, gave him his natural setting. He stood there facing her, the young wood-god in his own domain. She felt a droll almost hysteric yearning for trailing skirts, and the dignified refuge of an armchair. That absurdly girlish bow of black ribbon seemed to burn her neck. She knew that she looked incongruously young for the soul that inhabited her. She made a desperate grasp at dignity of voice. Her cold tone should be her trailing garment--make him realise the distance that was spiritually between them. When she spoke it was in a steady voice.

"My life--as regards love--is over, because I have come to a place in it where I do not even wish love," she said icily. A banal quotation slipped from her before she could stop it. "'_Ich habe geliebt und geleben_,'" she said, vexed at the crass ordinariness of the words as they struck her ear.

There was silence. A squirrel dropped a nut through the still, flaky gold of lapping leaves--then chittered angrily at its own awkwardness.

Loring said at last in a strangled voice:

"I am jealous of that dead man."

Sophy whitened.

"Don't say such things to me," burst from her in a sharp whisper.

"Have I hurt you?" he whispered back. "I'd die for you ... have I hurt you? Did you love him so much as that? Are you really dead ... with him?"

"Yes."

Another silence. Then the wilful, passionate young voice broke out again:

"No! you are not dead ... you are not dead! You are only sleeping...."

Sophy started as though from a sort of sleep.

"We must go," she said. "I'd forgotten...."

She turned and began walking rapidly away from him.

He caught her up in a stride.

"You break my life like a rotten twig," he said. "And go to roast chestnuts for your son."

The anguish of bitterness in his voice kept his words from absurdity.

"Don't say such things ... don't say such things," Sophy murmured, walking faster and faster. He kept beside her, implacable in the smarting novelty of defeated love and will.

"Your face is so beautiful and gentle.... Who would have thought you could be so hard ... like flint?"

"I am not hard.... I only tell you the bare truth to save you pain."

"You can't save me pain. Why do you throw me these mouldy crusts of old sayings? I offer you the best of me.... Don't you even think me worth a word out of your heart?"

Sophy paused. Her heart gushed pity--and regret.

"Oh, my dear...." she said lamentably, looking up at him with frank pain. "Why do you want to make it so hard for us both?"

"Then ... it is hard ... a little ... for you, too? I mean ... it hurts you to hurt me so?"

"Yes, yes, it hurts me! Do you think I am made of stone? Do you think I like seeing you suffer?"

"Then...." his throat closed on the words he wanted to say. He was ignominiously near to tears. Chokily he got it out:

"Then ... don't send me away ... just because ... I love you. Let me stay near you.... It can't hurt you ... and it's life to me."

"No, no. That would be horribly wrong of me--utterly, hatefully selfish."

He caught at this.

"You'd like to have me? You've called me a good 'playmate,' you know. I won't bore you with--with"--he gulped--"this craziness of mine.... If I'm 'good' ... you'll let me stay on?"

"Oh, it's all wrong! It's all wrong, my dear!" said Sophy, quite desperately. "You should go away at once. This is all just a phase ... just a passing...."

"Please," said Loring, with real dignity.

Sophy felt very unhappy. She knew that she was doing wrong to temporise. Yet that cruel kindness of the tender-hearted made her hesitate. She could not bear to banish him all at once in this harsh way.

"Well ... for a little while...." she murmured weakly. "But it would be much better for you to...."

"Please," said Loring again. "Allow me to judge of what will be best for me."

"I ought not to," she said miserably. The whole scene had unnerved her--jarred the fine, secure monotony of the life that she had thought so firmly established. One cannot stand face to face with genuine love without feeling a stir in chords long dumb. Loring's young, idealising passion had set certain strings in Sophy's nature vibrating. It gave her that sensation of aching melancholy with which we listen to the faint notes of an old piano that was rich and mellow in our youth. It made her feel very lonely. She had not once felt lonely since coming home--not once in these calmly joyous years of mental renewal. Restlessness she had known of late, but never loneliness. Now she felt all drooping with the solitude of her own spirit as she walked homeward beside Loring. The soft, dun red of the autumn sky seemed to her like the quiet, sombre glow of her own life that had no more flame to give forth, that had sunk into steady embers, that would presently resolve itself into the white ash of old age. Yet it was wonderful to be loved again--even though she had no love to give in return. It was movingly wonderful--though awful in a way--to feel this tonic answering of slack chords to the full, resonant notes struck from the blazing lyre of youth....

VI

Loring had said that he would be "good" if Sophy did not banish him altogether, and he was, very "good." It was the goodness of a spoilt child that swallows physic for the spoonful of jam to follow. The jam in Loring's case was represented by the hours that he was allowed in Sophy's presence. He had not known himself capable of such self-control. Altogether, his love for Sophy had revealed to him as it were another man cased within the man that he had heretofore thought was himself. This new man was of more sensitive stuff, finer and yet much stronger than the other man had been. It was something like having a sixth sense bestowed on him--this new appetency for all manner of things towards which until now he had only felt a vague indifference. His life, since college days, had been made up of sport, occasional spurts of travel in wild places, girls--to a moderate degree--the usual convivial, surface intercourse with other young bloods--some ennui, generally dispelled by drink (the average young American's ordinary indulgence in "high-balls" as a panacea for tedium).

Loring had an excellent, but lazy, mind. At Harvard he had read law. Once out of college, he had dropped it promptly. He had inherited fifteen millions at his father's death, when he was only twenty-one. What was the use of moiling away at law? The property was looked after already by a firm of the most distinguished lawyers in New York. He could see no "sense" in racking his brain with work that bored him when this work was absolutely without necessity. So he had spun in gay peripheral circles with the wheel of life--until meeting Sophy. Now she had drawn him to its centre. It was strange how his consciousness, thus centrifugally established, seemed another consciousness. Only the present was real--this radiant and somewhat awful present in which he loved Sophy as he had not believed that human beings could love. His past seemed like a dull, cheap volume of gaudy colour-prints. He could not realise that he had moved through those vulgar pictures of the past. _This_ Morris Loring, he felt, had not been part of them. He flared hot with shame, merely in glancing back at them. Yet his life had not been really shameful--in the grossest meaning of the word. Some sensual pleasure he had taken, not much. In the odiously smug phrase with which his native literature was given to describing virtuous youth, he was rather by way of being a "clean-limbed, clean-minded young American." But the pig of St. Anthony has a trick of running between the limbs of youth, no matter how cleanly--indeed, he seems to take an evil joy in tripping the cleanliest, if only once. It was these chance tumbles into the mire that scalded Loring's heart with shame, as he knelt now at the white shrine of his lady. He would have liked to have a new body as well as a new soul to love her with. For the will in him had not really submitted to her will. It was only bent to this momentary obedience, like a strong spring ready to act at the least touch. Love made him as wary and as cunning as a fox in springtime. Not for one moment did he relinquish his determination to win her ultimately. In the meantime, he was "good." That is, he did not vex her by hinting at his love.

All his energies were concentrated on becoming such "a playmate" as she would miss if taken from her. He was like Jacob serving for Rachel. This new life that had sprung up in him seemed to have the indomitable patience of spiders. And without tiring, ceaselessly, exhaustlessly, he spun about her the fine web of pleasant habit--a mesh of delicate, trivial customs, fine as the silken band that bound Fenris, and that would be as hard to break should the time come when she wished to break it.

His family and friends thought, of course, that he was merely staying on for the Virginia hunting season. It seemed reasonable enough. The "Eldon Hounds"--Macfarlane's pack--were well known in the North; but the Hunt was not fashionable. Most Northern sportsmen went to Loudoun county. There was too much wire in this part of Albemarle. Even Macfarlane threatened to leave if something could not be done about the wire. So Loring set to work in the matter. He became very popular in the county. This rather bored him, but he must seem to remain for the hunting. He did not choose that there should be gossip. He was very careful about his visits to Sweet-Waters. Even the Macfarlanes did not know how often he went there.

As for Sophy, after the first qualms of conscience had passed, and she saw how easily Loring slipped back again into the old, pleasant intercourse, she was delighted to have him stay on. He had a great charm for her, the charm of sheer beauty and a certain winsomeness that even Charlotte was beginning to yield to.

For this strange baptism of white fire changed Loring in all respects. His egotism shrivelled under it. He glowed with fellow kindliness towards every one. The homely, simple life of the Macons became full of enchantment to him. He did all sorts of little odd jobs for Charlotte, such as riding three miles out of his way to post a forgotten letter, or nailing hinges on the pigeon-house door, when there was no carpenter to be had for days.

Winks thought him a delightful person. He had the most glorious rides around the lawn, on Loring's hunters, every time that he came to Sweet-Waters. Even Bobby grew a little more tolerant. He, too, enjoyed these ambles on the big, shining beasts, that rattled their nostrils with high spirits, and stepped mincing sideways, as Loring walked at the bridle-rein. The boys straddled proudly, their small legs jutting wide apart, on the huge slanting shoulders of "Omicron" or "Proud Aleck."

Loring begged Sophy to try the splendid red hunter that he had bought from Macfarlane.

So she followed the hounds on Proud Aleck, and if Loring had adored her before, he could scarcely keep his love in hand when he saw her riding so gallantly at the tricky snake-fences, mounted on the glittering blood-red horse.

And, when the run was over, came the homeward ride with her, across twilit pasture lands and fallow. They would select low gaps in the fences--then over, side by side, like birds. There would be the reek of ploughed earth and wood smoke in their nostrils. Sometimes a rabbit would leap up under the horses' feet, making them swerve, snorting. They would see the little white, fluffy scut go zigzagging through the yellow broom-sedge.

As winter drew on, and they became more intimate, she read him some bits of her childish scribblings that she had discovered, put away by her mother in an old chest. They made deliciously funny reading in the firelit hours of tea-time. One line from a long, sprawling tragedy in blank verse came to be a saying with Loring:

"'Ah well to rob a comet of its tail
To make the moon a wig!'"

he used to quote dramatically, when anything seemed impracticable. He _was_ a dear playmate! Sophy became very fond of him indeed. And Loring, for his part, loved every member of the household, especially Judge Macon. There was such a taking contrast between the genial humour of the man and his gaunt, lean figure with its dark, rather tragic-looking face, that reminded him of the photographs of Edwin Booth as "Hamlet." Yes, he certainly looked like a world-worn, weary Hamlet who had recovered with only a slight lameness from Laertes's sword-thrust. The Judge limped a little from a bullet in his knee. He had fought in the Southern army when a lad of sixteen. Loring, as he watched the Judge limping about the house, mused sometimes on what life must have been like in Virginia when boys of sixteen had gone to war.

The Judge, on his side, returned Loring's liking in full. He quite exasperated Charlotte by what she called his "real weakness" for the young man.

"Yes, I've got a mighty soft spot for this Yankee boy," he would admit. Then he would chuckle wickedly. "But it's nothing to Sophy's," he would add; "only she don't know it."

Charlotte's more kindly feeling towards Loring did not keep her from being quite miserable over such possibilities. She thought them only too likely. She could foresee nothing but unhappiness for Sophy in such a marriage. Yet she was helpless. Sophy was not the sort of person that one could "guide." There was nothing for it but to leave her in God's hands, as the Judge had once suggested. Charlotte was truly religious. Yet it is strange how hard it is for the truly religious to "leave things in God's hands." "Putting parcels in the Heavenly post-office, and jerking at them by the string of prayer," the Judge called it.

Towards the end of November Loring's mother fell ill. He was telegraphed for. He was very fond of his mother, but the old egotism surged up in him when he read that she was not in danger, only suffering. He could not ease her suffering. That was the affair of doctors and trained nurses. However, he left for New York at once.

VII

Loring was not able to return to Virginia until the middle of January. He arrived at the Macfarlanes' late in the afternoon, and as soon as supper was over had Proud Aleck saddled and rode to Sweet-Waters.

The night was wild with wind, but very clear. A newly risen moon tilted above the eastern woodlands. The wind played madcap games--now leaping high into the heavens, now rushing low along the earth. The great half-moon just skimming the dark reach of forest was like a silver sail bellying in the flaw.

Loring exulted to feel the bay's withers once more between his knees, and the free countryside about him. He rode at a clipping trot, then galloped; then gave the horse his head up a long hill. Proud Aleck, excited by the gusty wind, sped like a racer over the bone-white winter grasses. They faced the blast gloriously. The warm reek of the flying horse blew back in Loring's face. He felt the great body plying nobly against his legs. Now they swept downward, jumped a brook, leaped into fallow. The huge horse seemed bounding over a floor of dark-red cloud, so easily he took the ploughland of spongy clay, so noiselessly his hoofs went over it. Now they breasted another hill. This was living! To ride with the winter wind through the cold flame of moonlight to the glowing hearth of his Lady!...

Would she be alone, he wondered--in her own study?... Or would she be sitting with her sister and the Judge in the general living room?... He cantered across the lawn. Ah--there was a flicker of firelight from her study window!... Perhaps she was there. Perhaps he would have the joy of seeing her alone, this first moment after those interminable six weeks....

Mammy Nan told him that she opened "de do'" for him, "'caze Miss Chalt an' dee Jedge done step over tuh dee Univussity, an' I'se sleepin' in dee house tuh keep keer uv Miss Sophy."

Miss Sophy was "in her steddy," Mammy Nan further informed him. She "sut'ny wuz glad he done come tuh cheer Miss Sophy up some. 'Peared like, to Mammy Nan, that she'd ben a-mopin' ever sence Miss Chalt an' dee Jedge tuck an' lef' her behine."

Loring found Sophy sitting in the firelight, gazing at the big logs of hickory, and smoothing her collie's head as it rested against her knee. The room was large but cosy. It had old-fashioned curtains of dark-red worsted grosgrain at the windows. Little green "steps" set between them held pots of flowers. There was all through the room a sweet scent of rose-geranium, lemon verbena, and the clean, fresh fragrance of new-cut logs. It was the perfume that he associated with her. He stood near the door after entering, breathing deep of this pleasant, candid scent, and drinking her with his eyes.

She looked up, startled. And he shook inwardly with the soft firelit beauty of her face. She was wearing a gown that he loved--an old gown of olive velveteen trimmed with narrow bands of fur. It was made like the gown in a picture, quite straight from throat to shoe-tip. The long, wide sleeves opened from the shoulder. They hid her arms usually; but when she reached for something, her lovely, slender arms gleamed between the soft bands of fur. Behind her, on her writing-table, was an old Algerian water-bottle of dull copper, and in it a branch of magnolia. The scarlet seed-cones gleamed like gems or coals of fire among the glossy black-green foliage. Her face as it turned to him against this background of leaves and jewelled seed-cones was something for a lover to remember in old age.... He got a desperate grip of himself and went forward. As she lifted her hand to his, the wide sleeve parted, as he had known that it would do, and the amber-white arm shone bare for his worship.... Without speaking, she smiled a welcome, but the firelight showed him tears caught on her under-lids. Mammy Nan's surmise was correct. Sophy had been "moping" a little of late. When Charlotte and the Judge had left for some festivity at the University two days ago, her mood had been quite tranquil. But she had been rather overworking, and these two days, all alone in the empty house, had set her brooding. It was nearly nine o'clock. The wind thrummed in deep, minor chords between the double doors that shut her study from the greenhouse in the wing. A hound, hunting alone by moonlight, bayed from the distance. Dhu cocked his ears--the supple tips hung flickering an instant, then drooped again. The collie resumed his wide, gold-eyed, tranced stare into the fire. He, too, seemed overwhelmed by melancholy. Sophy drew him to her at last, and leaned her cheek against his silky black shoulder which smelt like warm, clean straw. His sire was not a kennel dog, but tended sheep in the Highlands. Now when Sophy put her head against his shoulder, he leaned down his head on hers much as a person might have done.

With her arms around him and her eyes on the fire, she listened to the beating of his heart. The warm, red mystery of hearts--even a dog's heart--awed her. What was this love that even dogs could feel, and why was it so immeasurably sad? The feeling of desolation grew and grew.... She was so horribly lonely. Even the close, simple contact with her collie did not comfort her. This love without comprehension, that he gave her, was only another sadness. Nothing lasted. No one remained the same. There was Morris Loring.... At least he had seemed to have a real fondness for her, after he had conquered his first boyish, fantastic frenzy. Yet already he, too, had changed, forgotten. Just a nice, beautiful boy ... but she had been fond of him also.... Now he had forgotten. She was growing old. Youth draws youth. Naturally he would forget her.

The collie, hearing her sigh, got down from his chair and leaned his head against her knee with a low whine. She sat gazing at the burning logs and gently stroking the sleek, black head. It was so that Loring found her when he entered.

VIII

He had put all his will into that grip upon himself when he went forward. But now as he stood looking down at her, and saw the tears on her lashes, his heart seemed a white-hot weight that dropped him to his knees beside her. He did not dare touch her, but he grasped the arms of her chair with both hands, his vivid young face close to hers.

"Oh, my Beautiful...." he stammered. "What are you crying for? Who has hurt you?"

It was amazingly startling to have this impassioned young Greek rush like a faun out of the winter night and hurl himself at her knees, just when she had been thinking of him as forgetful of her and hundreds of miles distant. She managed another smile, keeping her hand on Dhu's head. The collie sat stolidly between them, pressing, jealously, closer to his mistress.

"No one has hurt me.... It's nothing.... Nothing but foolishness ... contemptible foolishness...."

"You were lonely?"

"I was just silly.... Get up, dear child."

"I'm not a 'child'.... I'm a man who loves you.... And I shall not get up ... not until you tell me what is troubling you...."

"Dear Morris ... do you call this being 'good'?"

"No. I call it being what I can't help being.... Do you think I can see tears in your eyes and play good little Harry?... I can't stand your tears.... They make me wild ... quite wild. Don't play with me.... Don't laugh...."

He caught her hand suddenly, pressing it against his breast.

"Feel that...." he stammered. "Can you laugh at that?"

The violent young heart drummed against her hand pressed down upon it by both his.

"It's an Idolater...." he went stammering on, his voice low and thick with the swift heart-beats. "Each throb worships you.... And you tell me to be 'good'.... You tell me that!"

The dog growled suddenly. It was a low, menacing rumble deep in his chest. His eyes were fixed on Sophy.

"Be quiet ... lie down, Dhu," she said, glad for an excuse of speaking normally. "Lie down!" she repeated sharply, as the dog remained motionless. He withdrew his head unwillingly from her knee, and subsided on the rug near her feet. Now his gold eyes were fixed on Loring. A rim of milky jade showed beneath them. There was suspicion and cold anger in their gaze.

Sophy was hemmed in by those quivering arms that did not touch her, but whose vibration she felt through the wood of the old chair. Loring's face was rapt and wild. He was "out of himself"--terribly close to her in his fanatic mystery of adoration.

"Why should you mind?" his words came racing breathlessly. "What I offer you isn't common or unclean.... I think of you as Catholics think of Mary...."

"My dear...." whispered Sophy. He hypnotised her with the tremendous intensity of his emotion. It poured on her from his dark, bold eyes that had a wild timidity even in their boldness.

The same inanity of mind that had assailed her that day in the October woods, under his first outburst, again made her feel at a loss. She could _not_ think of the right words to say. She drew back as far as she could from him in the deep chair. Her bosom rose and fell uncertainly. He moved her ... he confused her. She did not quite know what it was that he made her feel. The scent of horse and leather and winter fields was still fresh upon him. This scent confused her more. It was the sharp scent of vigorous manhood in her quiet room, with its warm fragrance of green wood and rose-geranium. It made her nervously aware of herself and of him.

"Dear Morris ... please get up...." she urged, making a great effort to be natural. "I can't think with you kneeling there like that.... You confuse me...."

"I don't want you to think.... I want you to _feel_.... I _want_ to confuse you.... I want you to feel something of what I'm feeling.... Yes, something of it ... something at least...."

"Don't...!" she murmured.

Her brow contracted, as if with pain. Yet she tried to smile. She was quite pale. So was Loring. But he did not move. His thirsty eyes drank and drank of her face.

"Oh, you wonder...!" he whispered hurryingly. "You wonder of the world.... Rose of the World!..."

Suddenly he dropped his head, and began kissing the velvet of her gown. She felt these kisses through the velvet--swift, wild, hurried--like the alight and flight of birds. His passion seemed winged like birds. And these wings beat about her, softly reckless and confusing. All Venus's doves seemed loosed in the firelit room. The air was thick with the throb of their pinions. Outside thrummed the deep, harsh chords of the winter wind. Outside was cold, clear space--a frost of stars--the free, unloving wind....

She bent forward, quite desperate to feel herself thus stirred. With her slender, strong hands she lifted his head by force from her knee ... tried to put him from her.... She wanted to be stern. She knew well that her greatest weakness was in dealing with love. She had always temporised. She could never quite get her own consent to be harsh with love of any kind. Even now she could not be as stern as she wished to be.

"Morris ... really ... you must not.... I can't have this...." she said brokenly.

He did not yield to her restraining touch, but leaned against her hands--seized them in his own, pressing down his face into them. She felt his lips quivering on them. Her palms quickened with those trembling lips.

Again the collie growled.

"There! You see...." she exclaimed nervously; "even Dhu is vexed with you.... Do you want me to be really angry with you?... Yes--I shall be really angry if you keep this up any longer.... I shall be angry ... Morris!"

But he crouched before her, grasping the folds of her gown in both hands. He even laughed a little, tossing back his short locks, that had been rumpled against her knee.

"_Be_ angry, then...." he murmured. "_Be_ angry.... What do the famishing care for anger?... Yes.... I thirst for you.... I don't hunger for you.... There's nothing so gross as hunger in my longing.... But I thirst.... I thirst.... Oh, Beautiful!... Be kind.... What is it to you if I worship you?... Can the wind kindle the moon? You should have seen the poor, mad wind trying to kindle her, as I did, when I rode here to you this night!... He raved at her as I rave at you.... And she was just like you--oh, so like you!... Cold, white, still, superior ... far off there in a heaven of her own ... like you.... He couldn't reach her.... Couldn't warm her.... Like me with you...."

He broke off, a spasm marring the excited beauty of his face.

"Oh, don't I know I can't warm you...!" he cried. "Not if I bathed you in my heart's blood--it would slip from you like a red sunset from the moon. White Wonder ... cold Moon-Woman!... Now I know what Endymion felt.... I know--I know...."

Sophy sat gazing at him, fascinated. She was lapped in a sort of wonder. Here was Love at his miracles again. Could this be "Morry" Loring--keen sportsman, crack polo player--this frantic young Rhapsodist at her knee, talking poetry as though it were his native tongue? He seemed unreal to her. She, herself, seemed unreal. He rushed on:

"Yes, yes!... You've called me Endymion in mockery. But I _am_ Endymion.... Did you know that when you mocked me?... Did you know that I am really the man that drew down the Lady Moon?..."

He laughed again. He was so amazingly beautiful as he crouched there, laughing with love in the firelight, that Sophy quivered with it. She felt dazed. She felt some one other than herself. She began to feel that there was a stranger within her--a woman she had never known. Some one wild and shy and spun of moonbeams--a sort of fairy-Sophy that this ecstatic youth was moulding out of dream-stuff--that was coming into ensorceled life under his touch as Galatea softened from marble into flesh under the caresses of Pygmalion....

She felt as if she must break away from him--escape from the sound of his feverish, flooding words--and that bold-timidity of his eyes that so fascinated her. She tried to rise, but he hemmed her in, with his arms upon her chair, encircling yet not touching her.

He laughed very low now--it was like a sort of sobbing.

"Oh, Selene.... Selene.... Selene...." he murmured. "Let yourself be loved ... with worship ... always with worship. I will never forget that you are a goddess, too.... But you shall never be lonely again ... if you will only bend to me.... There'll never be tears in your beautiful eyes again.... And you _were_ lonely--you know you were.... It's lonely work, Selene, shining alone in the roof of heaven...."

Sophy put up her hands to her temples, pressing the hair back from her face. Her dilated eyes looked dazed.

"I ... I think you're not quite yourself to-night...." she stammered. There was certainly some spell upon her. She strove against it--but weakly, like one striving to wake from an overpowering dream.

He gave that low laugh that so confused her.

"I'm _not_ myself...." he said. "Haven't I told you that I am Endymion?..."

He leaned towards her. His face grew soft and timorous. She felt his hand go stealing to her hair. One heavy lock had fallen loose. He drew it to him, buried his face in it and shivered from head to foot. Sophy sat gazing down at him. Her heart began beating strangely. The curve of the brown head bending near her breast struck her suddenly with a sharp tenderness. She touched it softly with her finger tips. At the touch of her fingers he trembled again--then looked up--that wild shyness still in his subdued eyes.... His hand slipped from her hair upon her neck. He knelt up and his quivering hand drew her gently towards him....

"This once ... only this once...." he pleaded, whispering ... "to remember all my life.... I will shut my eyes.... Selene.... You can think that I am sleeping ... as on Latmos...."

That thrall held Sophy--that and some wild, half-lawless romance in her own nature. It was as though reason forsook her. A veil woven of wind and firelight and the soft dreaminess of youthful passion floated between her and reality--shut her in from past and future--filmed about her like the pale smoke from an enchanter's fire.... She let herself be drawn towards that eager flower of the young, thirsty mouth. Nearer ... nearer.... Far, far away, a fine, chill voice said: "No. This you must not do...."

She heard it as the fainting hear their names called. An instant--then the young lips touched hers--delicately--clung trembling.... A thrill as in dreams--unreal, etherealised--ran through her.... This kiss was divine. Like nectar this kiss was to them both--long, miraculous, and mystically impassioned, as a kiss on the wild moors of elf-land....

When they came to themselves, they were leaning cheek to cheek, hand in hand, gazing into the fire which had glowed down to molten jewels. The wind harped round the quiet house, now low, now loud. A mouse, darting like a wee, grey fish, along the wainscoting, grew ever bolder. Presently he scampered across the train of Sophy's gown--then played upon the hearth-rug. The collie twitched his ruffled legs nervously as he lay sleeping. But those two did not move. For long, long minutes they sat there motionless, cheek to cheek, hand in hand, gazing into the fire....

IX

Before Loring went away, an hour later, he put a fresh log on the fire, smiling up at her shyly, as he knelt to do so.

"I'll mend the altar fire in your temple before I go, Selene," he had murmured.

He felt strangely subdued and awed after the wonder of that kiss. The enchantment that was over them held awe for them both. There was in it something mystic--an influence blowing, as it were, from home-lands of the soul dimly remembered. Sophy felt this consciously--Loring unconsciously. But he felt things through her, since that kiss. There had been between them during that long-blossoming kiss a transfusion of spirit. She was through and through him like music--like sunlight through the fibrils of a plant, from flower to root. And this subtle fusion made him know just what to say and do to satisfy her. It was this new-lent instinct that had made him so still after the wild magic of that kiss had set his blood and spirit singing. When she had whispered at last: "Go now ... dear...." he had risen without a protest. It was then he had knelt to put the fresh log on her fire. Afterwards he had bent and touched his lips to her hands as they lay together in her lap--then to the shining, fire-warmed tress that flowed over her shoulder. He had gone out, closing the door noiselessly as though she were in some mysterious trance, and he feared to waken her.

As in a trance himself, he had fetched Proud Aleck from the old stable. The horse had nickered when he heard him coming. In the fragrant darkness of the stable, Loring had thrown an arm over the bay's neck. "You brought me to her this night...." he whispered. He drew the horse's muzzle towards him, and pressed his lips to the broad front. He continued for some moments leaning against the great horse that quivered with impatience to be gone. He felt faint and languid. It was as if he had really been only mortal and she a goddess. His mortality seemed to fail under the bliss of this contact with immortality. It was as though sudden godhead had been bestowed on him and his flesh were consuming under it into a finer essence.

There was no pride as yet in his wonder. That beautiful humility of real love still held him. He was not even exultant that his "will" had won at last. He did not feel as though he had conquered but as though some great Winged Victory had caught him up and set him on this height, with its veil of golden mist. It was not the kingdoms of the earth that were offered him--but the kingdoms of the air ... starry places ... Diana's cloud-land ... hanging-gardens of the gods....

Loring was rapt into the ecstatic state of "conversion."... He was experiencing all the giddily rapturous throes and exquisite frenzies of what is known as "revelation"--only its cause was not divine but human love. He moved in a vision of clear light. Like Sophy, he was a stranger to himself, yet he felt that this new self was not really the stranger, but that old self which lay dark and shrivelled at the roots of being, like the husk of a seed, from which has sprung the triumphing blossom.... He rode home as on a wind of dreams. The splendid moon, now soaring in mid-heaven, seemed set there as a symbol for him, and him alone. "Selene.... Selene.... Selene...." went the hoofs of the great, red horse, like the strokes of a Rhapsodist, beating time to the music in his heart....

* * * * *

And Sophy, too, was all be-glamoured. She had heard the fairy-harp, she had listened to music blown from the land of Heart's Desire. Ior, the fairy chief, had kissed her eyes and lips. She was amazed, bemused--deep down in her heart there was a great fear. Yet there was joy also. Not the sane joy of everyday ... but a fragile, iridescent trembling as of a dewy gossamer spun between the lintels of the door of Dreams. She was afraid to move lest she should destroy this delicate, fine-spun joy. Beyond its veil glimmered the wings of golden dreams. She knew well how Diana must have felt after she had kissed the sleeping shepherd.

She was like one in some old-time fable, who gives a wanderer a cup of water, and, lo! after drinking, the wanderer shakes back his cloak of hodden-grey, and it is Eros himself glowing against the twilight--she had entertained, unawares, the mightiest angel of them all. The soft, electric plumes of Love had folded down upon her. She was smothered in his sparkling wings, yet this lovely death only released her to new life. It was only her self of later years that was dying softly. She felt herself gleaming, slipping from the hard shell of years--a pearl released, a pearl bathed in seas of wonder.

Back to her earliest girlhood she was washed ... back, back to that shore where all is dream and miracle.... When she had loved Cecil, she had not been so young; she was younger now than when she had wept over her first lover's death. She was not only young--she was youth itself. She was not standing outside the door of dreams as she had fancied, but within it. That trembling, iridescent gossamer of joy shut out reality--the past, the future--shut her in with the lovely serving-maidens, dreams fulfilled.... It seemed to her that all the poetry of the world was flowering in her heart. Her breast felt full of roses ... red and white roses of love for every mood....

Her little travelling clock struck twelve. It seemed like the voice of a malicious fairy rousing her from her too lovely trance. She started up. The collie sprang up with her, and stood alert, ears cocked, eyes upon her face. She looked about her dazedly. The room was not the same. It gazed back at her with a new expression. She felt as if bodily she, too, had grown different--were looking at the old, familiar objects from a child's stature. The plants in the windows seemed larger. They were like a fairy forest. As the firelight caught the crimson and purple bells of the fuchsias, they seemed to sway--to ring forth a faint, wild music....

She put her hands to her face. This racing of her fancy was like a light fever. And now when she glanced up again, she saw the fuchsias like strange insects flying among their leaves. Their scarlet stamens were like the frail legs of wasps drooped for flight.... She went up and touched one softly, to assure herself that it was a flower. Fuchsias were never like other flowers to her after that night.

She broke one off and took it with her upstairs. Her bedroom also greeted her with a new look. The fire was almost out. She kneeled down to mend it. As the flame sprang to life again beneath her fingers, she thought of "The Witch of Atlas": ".... Men scarcely know how beautiful fire is...." She knew. She knelt there, adoring the delicate flame, purest and fiercest of elements. Yes--fire was purity itself. This lovely fire in her own heart purified her. She was a Phoenix ... the ashes of her life were only a soft, pale nest from which she had risen thus glorious. Or no--the Dark Goddess had lain her on the coals of pain ... now she was immortal. This white flame within her was immortality....

She slept fitfully but deliciously that night. Every little while she would start awake. It was as if he spoke to her, saying: "Wake, beloved--I, too, am wakeful...." It was delicious to wake thus and drift delicately backward on the tide of dreams into that haven of light, rapturous sleep. Love hummed about her like a fairy bee and stung reason to numbness. All night long, sleeping or waking, phantasy rocked her softly. The warm, firelit air seemed abeat with the wings of the white doves of Venus....

* * * * *

When she woke fully next morning, Sophy thought at first that she had been dreaming. Then all came back to her. She started up in bed. Fright seized her--sheer, panic-terror. What had she done and felt? What had come to her?...

Mammy Nan had kindled a roaring fire, and thrown wide the shutters. The brilliant January sun streamed over the carpet. The sky was blue and bitter, without a cloud. Naked and unashamed, the bold winter morning glared in upon her. She shrank from it, feeling small and frightened like a child stripped for a bath in the ocean which it sees for the first time.

What had come to her?... Then she recalled the delicate clinging of that young, ardent mouth, and her own blood submerged her, pulsing in one shamed wave from head to feet.... She would not think. She sprang from bed and plunged into the icy water of her morning bath that was all netted with sunbeams. She dressed without knowing that she dressed. All the time she kept saying within herself, "What has come to me?... What has come to me?"

She went to the window--stared up at the cloudless blue that seemed to swim with crystal beads as she gazed.

"My God, what has happened to me?... What is this that has happened to me?" she asked. Lacing her fingers hard together, she kept murmuring: "What is it?... My God!... what is it?"

She felt ridiculous and abased in her own sight; but the glamour was stealing over her again. "It is impossible ... utterly impossible!" she kept telling herself. Yet at the bottom of it all, shining up through darkling depths, was that fairy-gold of joy, like the gold crown on the head of the frog in the folk tale. Recalling this old fable of her childhood, she laughed unwillingly. It was a wry laugh, indeed. "Yes," she told herself, "a frog with a gold crown--that is what this craziness amounts to.... I am ridiculous ... ridiculous...!" She looked harshly at her reflection in the mirror. "You are ridiculous," she said to it.