Part 33 (2/2)

Many had wished to tell Winsome these things, but to no one hitherto had been given the discoverer's soul, the poet's voice, the wizard's hand to bring the answering love out of the deep sea of divine possibilities in which the tides ran high and never a lighthouse told of danger.

”Tell me more,” said Winsome, being a woman, as well as fair and young. These last are not necessary; to desire to be told about one's eyes, it is enough to be a woman.

Ralph looked down. In such cases it is necessary to refresh the imagination constantly with the facts. As in the latter days wise youths read messages from the quivering needle of the talking machine, so Ralph read his message flash by flash as it pulsated upward from a pure woman's soul.

”Once you would not tell me why your eyelashes were curled up at the ends,” said this eager Columbus of a new continent, drawing the new world nearer his heart in order that his discoveries might be truer, surer, in detail more trustworthy. ”I know now without telling. Would you like to know, Winsome?”

Winsome drew a happy breath, nestling a little closer--so little that no one but Ralph would have known. But the little shook him to the depths of his soul. This it is to be young and for the first time mastering the geography of an unknown and untraversed continent. The unversed might have thought that light breath a sigh, but no lover could have made the mistake. It is only in books, wordy and unreal, that lovers misunderstand each other in that way.

”I know,” said Ralph, needing no word of permission to proceed, ”it is with touching your cheek when you sleep.”

”Then I must sleep a very long time!” said Winsome merrily, making light of his words.

”Underneath in the dark of either eye,” continued Ralph, who, be it not forgotten, was a poet, ”I see two young things like cherubs.”

”I know,” said Winsome; ”I see myself in your eyes--you see yourself in mine.”

She paused to note the effect of this tremendous discovery.

”Then,” replied Ralph, ”if it be indeed my own self I see in your eyes, it is myself as G.o.d made me at first without sin. I do not feel at all like a cherub now, but I must have been once, if I ever was like what I see in your eyes.”

”Now go on; tell me what else you see,” said Winsome.

”Your lips--” began Ralph, and paused.

”No, six is quite enough,” said Winsome, after a little while, mysteriously. She had only two, and Ralph only two; yet she said with little grammar and no sense at all, ”Six is enough.”

But a voice from quite other lips came over the rising background of scrub and tangled thicket.

”Gang on coortin',” it said; ”I'm no lookin', an' I canna see onything onyway.”

It was Jock Gordon. He continued:

”Jock Scott's gane hame till his breakfast. He'll no bother ye this mornin', sae coort awa'.”

CHAPTEE x.x.xV.

SUCH SWEET SORROW.

WINSOME and Ralph laughed, but Winsome sat up and put straight her sunbonnet. Sunbonnets are troublesome things. They will not stick on one's head. Manse Bell contradicts this. She says that her sunbonnet never comes off, or gets pushed back. As for other people's, la.s.ses are not what they were in her young days.

”I must go home,” said Winsome; ”they will miss me.”

”You know that it is 'good-bye,' then,” said Ralph.

”What!” said Winsome, ”shall I not see you to-morrow?” the bright light of gladness dying out of her eye. And the smile drained down out of her cheek like the last sand out of the sand-gla.s.s.

”No,” said Ralph quietly, keeping his eyes full on hers, ”I cannot go back to the manse after what was said. It is not likely that I shall ever be there again.”

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