She looked upon him still indulgently. It was all concerning their life across the lake, and slight wonder was it that she was at one with him in his dreaming, he the man of action, the man with the sense of humor and perception of the grotesque, who always laughed at things,--that he should thus idle so happily in fancy with the Shack and its surroundings, well, she felt in its fullness love"s compliment to her.
She knew the keynote of it all and but encouraged him with speaking eyes. He was looking out of the window now but he turned to her in a moment:
"It seems to me," he said, "that we are already getting a little of the flavor of our own country. I"ll be imagining the Pines of Saginaw next.
Look out upon that expanse of snow."--The train was tearing down through the Des Moines valley now--"That is snow, real snow, no tremendous, swirling, threatening drifts, no dead expanse with bare, bleak spots, but instead, a great soft mantle, protecting the germs of the coming crops and the ally, not the enemy of man. How white it is, as it has a right to be. It means well. It is cold, but it is second cousin to the seeds and to our own kind of spring. It is well connected."
There was something to the lover"s dreams and vaporings. The quality of earth and air was changing imperceptibly but surely. The spirit of the Lake Region was abroad and had wandered even into Iowa.
The shadows of the telegraph poles, slanting eastward, became longer and longer. Stafford, abandoning reluctantly his pictures of the future when the two should be together, laughed quietly:
"Will you always be so patient?" he asked.
She laughed as well: "I"m afraid, big boy, that there does not live a wise woman who cares who would not be always patient listening when the theme was such and the object such. Did I not say that ponderously and nicely?" she added. And he but laughed again.
They made their way to the Ca.s.sowary, for there were many hand-shakings and genial partings in progress there and the two were, necessarily, a part of the scene. More than one lasting friendship had been formed in the luxurious Ca.s.sowary.
Evening was near. Already the Pillar of Cloud by day looming above the sh.o.r.e of the great lake was plainly visible. The slower way through the city was made, the train came to a stand-still and upon the ears of its inmates broke all the varied station sounds, the calls of starters, the clangor of engine bells, the trucks and the shouting of cabmen outside.
Stafford a.s.sisted the Far Away Lady--the Far Away Lady no longer--to alight from the platform:
"The harshness is over," he said. "We will never part again."
"Never," she said, and then, "It has been a long time."
She had brightened her grey traveling dress with a rose-colored ribbon at her throat, and her cheeks were rose-colored, too.
"I would have come sooner, had I known," said the man.
And they went out into the world together.
THE END