When he looked back to find his new acquaintance, her faithful
wilderness had swallowed her up. Only the veery’s song, farther away and
fainter; only the aeolian tones about him; only the feeling of vanished
music and uncaptured song.
Fresh colors after rain now blended where she had been. And still he
stood among them, gazing, trying to comprehend the treasure he had
found. Thus the miner turns in his eager fingers the crystal that
puzzles him, and calls it blende, the thing that deceives.
He had not asked her name. He had made a supreme discovery, and the name
was unimportant.
For his predicament there are names enough, ancient and mostly
unbelieved. We might say that he had fallen head over heels in love,
except that she was not a butt of malmsey or a hollow tree full of
honey. We might say that the minute she met him she pursed up his heart,
except that she was not in the habit of carrying a purse. At first sight
they had changed eyes, but what would that mean in terms of electricity?
To be soberly modern we might say that he had yielded as easily as zinc
yields its electrons to copper, plating it round and defending it
forever. But the trouble is that Marvin had forgotten all his chemistry.
There he stood, a man of lightning without one word of lightning at his
command. There he stood, compounded of hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen,
oxygen, fluorine, sodium, magnesium, silicon, phosphorus, sulphur,
chlorine, potassium, calcium, iron, and iodine, and not one element had
a characteristic thing to say.
But he was swiftly coming to a conclusion just the same. He was reaching
the upshot of response. In five minutes he had the resultant in the
homely words of old romance. He loved this girl. He would love her and
cherish her till death did them part. No lapse of years, no cancer, no
disfigurement would make her less dear.
He was in love and no mistake, and the first thing to do was to lock the
lamp-house door.