Iole Part 19

"You _love_ me--already?" she exclaimed under her breath.

"Love you! I--I--there are no words--" The thrush stirred the sprayed foliage and called once, then again, restless for the moon.

Her eyes wandered over him thoughtfully: "So _that_ is love.... I didn't know.... I supposed it could be nothing pleasanter than friends.h.i.+p, although they say it is.... But how could it be? There is nothing pleasanter than friends.h.i.+p.... I am perfectly delighted that you love me. Shall we marry some day, do you think?"

He strove to speak, but her frankness stunned him.

"I meant to tell you that I am engaged," she observed. "Does that matter?"

"Engaged!" He found his tongue quickly enough then; and she, surprised, interested, and in nowise dissenting, listened to his eloquent views upon the matter of Mr. Frawley, whom she, during the lucid intervals of his silence, curtly described.

"Do you know," she said with great relief, "that I always felt that way about love, because I never knew anything about it except from the symptoms of Mr. Frawley? So when they told me that love and friends.h.i.+p were different, I supposed it must be so, and I had no high opinion of love ... until you made it so agreeable. Now I--I prefer it to anything else.... I could sit here with you all day, listening to you. Tell me some more."

XVI

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He did. She listened, sometimes intently interested, absorbed, sometimes leaning back dreamily, her eyes partly veiled under silken lashes, her mouth curved with the vaguest of smiles.

He spoke as a man who awakes with a start--not very clearly at first, then with feverish coherence, at times with recklessness almost eloquent. Still only half awakened himself, still scarcely convinced, scarcely credulous that this miracle of an hour had been wrought in him, here under the sky and setting sun and new-born leaves, he spoke not only to her but of her to himself, formulating in words the rhythm his pulses were beating, interpreting this surging tide which thundered in his heart, clamoring out the fact--the fact--the fact that he loved!--that love was on him like the grip of Fate--on him so suddenly, so surely, so inexorably, that, stricken as he was, the clutch only amazed and numbed him.

He spoke, striving to teach himself that the incredible was credible, the impossible possible--that it was done! done! done! and that he loved a woman in an hour because, in an hour, he had read her innocence as one reads through crystal, and his eyes were opened for the first time upon loveliness unspoiled, sweetness untainted, truth uncompromised.

"Do you know," she said, "that, as you speak, you make me care for you so much more than I supposed a girl could care for a man?"

"Can you love me?"

"Oh, I do already! I don't mean mere love. It is something--_something_ that I never knew about before. _Every_thing about you is so--so exactly what I care for--your voice, your head, the way you think, the way you look at me. I never thought of men as I am thinking about you.... I want you to belong to me--all alone.... I want to see how you look when you are angry, or worried, or tired. I want you to think of me when you are perplexed and unhappy and ill. Will you? You _must_! There is n.o.body else, is there? If you do truly love me?"

"n.o.body but you."

"That is what I desire.... I want to live with you--I promise I won't talk about art--even _your_ art, which I might learn to care for. All I want is to really live and have your troubles to meet and overcome them because I will not permit anything to harm you.... I will love you enough for that.... I--do you love other women?"

"Good G.o.d, no!"

"And you shall not!" She leaned closer, looking him through and through.

"I _will_ be what you love! I will be what you desire most in all the world. I _will_ be to you everything you wish, in every way, always, ever, and forever and ever.... Will you marry me?"

"Will _you_?"

"Yes."

She suddenly stripped off her glove, wrenched a ring set with brilliants from the third finger of her left hand, and, rising, threw it, straight as a young boy throws, far out into deepening twilight. It was the end of Mr. Frawley; he, too, had not only become a by-product but a good-by product. Yet his modest demands had merely required a tear a year!

Perhaps he had not asked enough. Love pardons the selfish.

She was laughing, a trifle excited, as she turned to face him where he had risen. But, at the touch of his hand on hers, the laughter died at a breath, and she stood, her limp hand clasped in his, silent, expressionless, save for the tremor of her mouth.

"I--I must go," she said, shrinking from him.

He did not understand, thrilled as he was by the contact, but he let her soft hand fall away from his.

Then with a half sob she caught her own fingers to her lips and kissed them where the pressure of his hand burned her white flesh--kissed them, looking at him.

"You--you find a child--you leave a woman," she said unsteadily. "Do you understand how I love you--for that?"

He caught her in his arms.

"No--not yet--not my mouth!" she pleaded, holding him back; "I love you too much--already _too_ much. Wait! Oh, _will_ you wait?... And let me wait--_make_ me wait?... I--I begin to understand some things I did not know an hour ago."

In the dusk he could scarcely see her as she swayed, yielding, her arms tightening about his neck in the first kiss she had ever given or forgiven in all her life.

And through the swimming tumult of their senses the thrush's song rang like a cry. The moon had risen.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

XVII

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Mounting the deadened stairway noiselessly to her sister's room, groping for the door in the dark of the landing, she called: "Iole!" And again: "Iole! Come to me! It is I!"

The door swung noiselessly; a dim form stole forward, wide-eyed and white in the electric light.

Then down at her sister's feet dropped Aphrodite, and laid a burning face against her silken knees. And, "Oh, Iole, Iole," she whispered, "Iole, Iole, Iole! There is danger, as you say--there is, and I understand it ... now.... But I love him so--I--I have been so happy--so happy! Tell me what I have done ... and how wrong it is! Oh, Iole, Iole!

What have I done!"

"Done, child! What in the name of all the G.o.ds have you done?"

"Loved him--in the names of all the G.o.ds! Oh, Iole! Iole! Iole!"

"----The thrush singing in darkness; the voice of spring calling, calling me to his arms! Oh, Iole, Iole!--these, and my soul and his, alone under the pagan moon! alone, save for the old G.o.ds whispering in the dusk----"

"----And listening, I heard the feathery tattoo of wings close by--the wings of Eros all aquiver like a soft moth trembling ere it flies! Peril divine! I understood it then. And, stirring in darkness, sweet as the melody of unseen streams, I heard the old G.o.ds laughing.... _Then_ I knew."

"Is that all, little sister?"

"Almost all."