Persis was dressed warmly, and she had put on high boots and a short, thick mackinaw jacket. But she shivered with the midnight chill and with a kind of ecstatic terror.
Forbes had planned his route. He would avoid the ascending stairway to the temple of Enslee"s worship, and lead her to the sunken gardens, which he had longed to explore with her at his side.
They did not wade out into the mid-sea of the lawn. He remembered Persis" dictum that behind the blinds there are always eyes. Like snickering truants they skirted the bal.u.s.trade, the shadowy privet hedge, the ma.s.ses of juniper and bay and box, till they reached the point where the winding stairway dropped down between its high brick walls.
The shadows were doubly dense here, and Persis hung back, but Forbes laughed at her for a poltroon, and she refused to take the dare. He was so afraid that she might fall that he finally suggested:
"If you are afraid of stumbling here, I--I"m not forgetting my promise; but I just wanted to say that I--I don"t mind holding on to you, if you want to ask me to."
She declined with whispered thanks. Down, down the walk drifted. At length they heard a murmur--the mysteriously musical noise of a fountain. They rounded a few more curves and came upon a niched Cupid riding a dolphin, from whose mouth an arc of water poured with a sound of chuckling laughter. The green patina that covered the bronze was uncannily beautiful in the moonlight, and the water was molten silver.
They stood and watched it like children for a long while. Then Forbes urged Persis along to the lowest of the circular levels.
There he led her to a bench and dropped down beside her. They both looked off into the huge caldron of the hills, filled with moonlight as with a mist.
The ragged woods in the distance were superb now in blue velvet.
Everything was enn.o.bled--rewritten in poetry. Everything plain and simple and ugly took on splendor and mystic significance. Every object, every group of objects, became personal and seemed to be striving to say something.
Persis and Forbes sat worshiping like Pa.r.s.ees of the moon, in awesome silence, till Forbes could no longer hush the clamor in his heart.
"Miss Cabot," he said, "I promised not to annoy you. Would it annoy you if I told you that--that I love you with all my heart and soul and being?"
"How could you love me?" she answered, softly, hoping to be contradicted. "You"ve known me only a few days."
"There are some people we live with for years and never like nor understand; others we know and love the moment our eyes meet."
"And did you love me the moment our eyes met?"
"Long before that. I loved the back of your hat and one shoulder."
"Do you tell everybody you meet the same thing? It"s rather a stale question to ask a man, but you do seem rather impulsive on so short an acquaintance."
"Short acquaintance? We"ve seen each other more than most people see of each other in six months. I know you and I know myself, and I know that I shall never be happy unless I can be trying to make you happy."
"I am very happy just now," she murmured.
"But we can"t sit here forever, and we can"t even be together for more than a day or two. I want you for my own. I don"t want to see you only--only on--Mr. Enslee"s property."
"Which reminds me," Persis said, with a tone of dispelled romance, "that we are still on Mr. Enslee"s property, and it doesn"t seem fair to him."
"Then let"s leave Mr. Enslee"s property."
"How? In an airship?"
"See that wall down there. That is one of the boundary lines. If we were over that I could tell you some things that I"ve got to tell you."
"It"s an awfully long way."
"Not so long as you think."
"No, no; it"s easy to descend to Avernus, or whatever it was; but to get back! I"d never have the strength for that."
"It"s not far. Let"s walk to keep warm. You are cold, aren"t you?"
"Frozen, that"s all. Well, come along, I"ll go part way with you."
They set out upon the little path. There were no trees to shelter them now from the moon, and its light seemed to beat upon the hillside like waves. The moon that draws the sea along in tides could not but have its influence on these two atoms, and on the blood that sped through their tiny veins. The moon filled them with the love of love.
Constantly pausing to turn back, but finding it easier to drift on down than begin the upward climb, Persis went on and on, arm in arm with Forbes. By and by they reached the boundary wall. He helped her to set one knee upon it and mount awkwardly. He clambered up and sat down at her side. Their backs were toward the Enslee demesne, their feet in the unknown.
And there, without delay, Forbes told her that she must be his wife, told her that he loved her as woman had never been loved before.
His hands fought to caress her, his lips tingled to be again at her cheek, but he kept his promise.
Yet the influence of the promise was potent on her, too. She knew that he was in an anguish of temptation, and she glowed with his struggle.
The moon and the width of the world, the silent night-cry of the world in the lonely dark, and the yearning light filled her with a need of love. She regretted the promise, she wished that he would break it, and her absolution waited ready for his deed.
But his sense of honor prevailed upon his hands, though he could not keep silent about his heartache.
"Couldn"t you possibly love me, Miss Cabot? Couldn"t you possibly?" he pleaded; and she whispered, with a sad sweetness:
"I could--all too easily, Mr. Forbes, but I am afraid to love. I thought I never should love anybody really. And now that I know I might, it is so terrible an awakening that I--I"m afraid of it."
"Don"t be afraid," he implored. "Love me. Let yourself love me."
"I"m afraid, Mr. Forbes."
"Then if you"re afraid to love, it"s because you don"t, because you--can"t."
This hurt her pride. Her heart was so swollen with this new power that it would not be denied either by herself or him.
"Yes, I could! Oh, I could! But I mustn"t--I mustn"t let myself love you--not now--not so soon."
"Then I must wait," he sighed, and said no more. And she sat in a silence, though there was a great noise of heartbeats in her breast and in her temples and ears.
She began to shiver with the night and with her excitement. She wanted to say that they must start back; but her tongue stumbled thickly against her chattering teeth. The world was bitter cold--so far from him. In his arms would be warmth and comfort as at a fireplace. She was lonely, unendurably lonely and wistful.
And he sat at her side in an equal ague of distance and need.
Finally he took his eyes from the moon and bent his gaze on her. He saw how her shoulders quaked.
"You"re cold, you poor, sweet child--you"re cold. I"m dying to take you in my arms, but I promised--I promised."
She was afraid to surrender, and afraid to defy the will of the night.
The chill shook her with violence again and again till she felt the world rocking, the stone wall wavering. Then she leaned toward him and whispered:
"Kiss me!"
He could hardly believe that he heard, but he caught her to him and sought her lips with his. Immediately she was afraid again. Again she hid the preciousness of her mouth from him, writhed and struggled and twisted her face, hid it in his breast. But now he fought her with gentle ruthlessness, took her cold cheeks in his cold hands, and, holding her face up to the moonlight, kissed her eyes, and her dew-besprent hair and her cheeks, and pressed the first great kiss on her lips. They fled from him no more.