Part 24 (1/2)

CHAPTER XXVI

HOW IT ENDED--AND BEGAN.

The railings and uprights of the porch were strips of jet against a world swimming in blue and silver gray. The planks creaked under our feet. A confusion of saddles and farm gear hung against the log walls.

The tin basin stood on its accustomed shelf. The world of magic was jumbled with the commonplace. I led her over to the corner where the eye could gather in the widest vista. She stood there before me very upright and slim and her eyes held mine as frankly as a child's might have done.

I gazed at her for a moment more, then my arms went out and encircled her, and I talked very fast and very low.

”I may, at times, seem extremely abrupt,” I confessed, ”but I'm not.

I've wors.h.i.+ped you upon a coral reef and I've made love to you through endless days and nights with stars for my witnesses much larger than these--and softer. And now I've found you--I've found you, and it doesn't matter what you say, because I shall never again let you go.”

She tilted her face upward and her eyes were dancing as she quoted, ”'n.o.body asked you, sir.'”

She stood there, facing me, within the circle of my arms, with her chin as proudly tilted as though she were not surrendering, and with the old incomparable smile lingering on her lips.

And as I gazed at her in the witchery of the moon, the utter improbability of it all dawned upon me, until I felt that a moment would bring awakening and the old gnawing despair. The expression was that which I knew so well, and she seemed no more and no less real than she had been, looking out from the mate's chest, with the circle of mahogany-skinned savages sitting silent before her shrine.

That I had loved her was inevitable. It was written, but that was the lesser part. Here she stood looking at me out of eyes that were accepting my love without question. Why did she, without even the siege of a long wooing, so permit me to step into the temple of her life, as naturally as though it were the shrine of the coral island where I belonged as high-priest and demi-G.o.d?

She had, before to-night, met me only once, and then I had been the churl, brusquely rebuffing her sweet courtesy. Yet she had ridden across the hills, and something sang to me that it was to me she had ridden, though she may have called it coming to her brother. Why was it? Had I really conjured her soul to me by wis.h.i.+ng it across the world? Had supreme forces compelled us both, so that preliminary details were superfluous between us?

However that might be, the gracious smile died slowly on her lips to a seriousness far sweeter, and as she looked into my face her eyes widened, and dropped all concealment until I was gazing into her soul.

When a woman meets the eyes of a man in that fas.h.i.+on he ceases to question, and wishes only to do reverence. It is like rolling back the waters of the sea and revealing the wonders of the deeps. For it is decreed that the eyes of a woman are given her in defense, to hide behind their dance and sparkle the things which lie beneath--and to disarm. When once they have opened in the miracle of self-revelation and surrendered their secret, one must be unworthy who feels himself worthy of such a manifestation.

And the secret I read there was that she loved me beyond all doubting.

It mattered no longer how the wonder had come to pa.s.s. That was a mere point of G.o.d-craft. It had happened, and the stars were singing.

I dropped on one knee and lifted her hand to my lips.

Later, I sketched rapidly, agitatedly, the story of the coming of her portrait to the island, of its place on the chest and its subsequent wors.h.i.+p. I told her of meeting Keller on the steamer and Maxwell in New York. I summarized the chain of evidence which had to my mind proved her to be Mrs. Weighborne. I have no doubt that I told it badly, but that was of no consequence, since back of my broken narration was the pent-up rush of emotion, and to her this seemed important. Nor did my story, so fantastic that I hardly expected her to accept it without proof, seem to surprise her.

”And,” I concluded, ”I am going to build you a new temple which will make the Taj Mahal a tawdry mosque, for every block and rafter will be love, and each year we live I shall add new minarets of wors.h.i.+p--and not only five times each day but a hundred, its _muezzin_ shall call me to prayer.”

Her eyes were glowing, and her laugh trembled.

”I came quite a long way,” she told me, ”to make you say that, but after all you have done it very nicely.”

”But,” I admitted after a long pause, ”I don't yet understand--not that it matters now--but why? That word is beating at my brain--why in the names of all the G.o.ds should you care?”

”Why shouldn't I?” she indignantly countered.

”You have known me,” I said blankly, ”a few days--and I should have imagined that I made a sorry impression.”

She laughed again.

”I have known you always,” she replied.