"And now while everything is pleasant at home, it is the time for me to
go away. My father was right: this is no place for me. I must be where
people think as I do--must live where I shall not be alone. There will
soon be plenty of companions everywhere. The whole world will believe
in Evolution before I am an old man."
"I think you are right," she said quietly. "It is best for you to go
and to go at once."
When he spoke again, plainly he was inspired with fresh confidence by
her support of his plans.
"And now, Gabriella, I must tell you what I have determined to do in
life: I want your approval of that, and then I am perfectly happy."
"Ah," she said quickly, "that is what I have been wanting to know. It
is very important. Your whole future depends on a wise choice."
"I am going to some college--to some northern university, as soon as
possible. I shall have to work my way through, sometimes by teaching,
in whatever way I can. I want to study physical science. I want to
teach some branch of it. It draws me, draws all that is in me. That is
to be my life-work. And now?"
He waited for her answer: it did not come at once.
"You have chosen wisely. I am so glad!"
"Oh, Gabriella!" he cried, "if you had failed me in that, I do not know
what I should have done! Science! Science! There is the fresh path for
the faith of the race! For the race henceforth must get its idea of
God, and build its religion to Him, from its knowledge of the laws of
His universe. A million years from now! Where will our dark theological
dogmas be in that radiant time? The Creator of all life, in all life He
must be studied! And in the study of science there is least wrangling,
least tyranny, least bigotry, no persecution. It teaches charity, it
teaches a well-ordered life, it teaches the world to be more kind. It
is the great new path of knowledge into the future. All things must
follow whither it leads. Our religion will more and more be what our
science is, and some day they will be the same."
She had no controversy to raise with him about this. She was too
intently thinking of troublous problems nearer heart and home.
And these rose before him also: he fell into silence.
"But, oh, Gabriella! how long, how long the years will be that separate
me from you!"
"No!" she exclaimed, her whole nature starting up, terrified. "What do
you mean? No!"
"I mean while I am going through college; while I am preparing a place
for you."
"Preparing a place FOR ME! You have prepared a place for me and I have
taken it. My place is with you."
"Gabriella, do you know I have not a dollar in the world?"
"_I_ have!"
"But--"
"Ah, don't! don't! That would be the first time you had ever wounded
me!"
"How can I--"
"How can you go away and leave me
here--here--anywhere--alone--struggling in the world alone? And you
somewhere else alone? Lose those years of being together? Can you even
bear the thought of it? Ah, I did not think this!"
"It was only because--"
"But it shall never be! I will not be separated from you!"
David remembered a middle-aged man at the University, working his way
through college with his wife beside him. His heart melted in joy and
tenderness--before the possibility of life with her so near. He could
not speak.
"I will never be separated from you!"
And then, feeling her victory won, she added joyously: "And what I have
shall never be separated from me! We three--I, thou, it--go together.
My two years' salary--do you think I love it so little as to leave it
behind when I go away with you?"
"Oh, Gabriella!"--
The domes of the trees were white with blossoms now and with moonlight.
How warm and sweet the air! How sacred the words and the silences! Two
children of vast and distant revolutions guided together into one
life--a young pair facing toward a future of wider, better things for
mankind.
"Gabriella, when a man has heard the great things calling to him, how
they call and call, day and night, day and night!"
"When a woman hears them once, it is enough."
Even in this hour Gabriella was receiving the wound which is so often
the pathos and the happiness of a woman's love. For even in these
moments he could not forget Truth for her. And so, she said to herself
with a hidden tear, it would be always. She would give him her all, she
could never be all to him. Her life would be enfolded completely in
his; but he would hold out his arms also toward a cold Spirit who would
forever elude him--Wisdom.
The golden crescent dropped behind the dark green hills of the silent
land. Where were they? Gone? or still under the trees?
"Ah, Gabriella, it is love that makes a man believe in a God of Love!"
"David! David!"--
The south wind, warm with the first thrill of summer, blew from across
the valley, from across the mighty rushing sea of the young hemp.
O Mystery Immortal! which is in the hemp and in our souls, in its bloom
and in our passions; by which our poor brief lives are led upward out
of the earth for a season, then cut down, rotted and broken--for Thy
long service!