When she had written it down, she went to Stephanie's room and found it
empty.
But through the open window sunshine streamed, and presently she saw the
red-cloaked figure down by the river's edge; heard the girl's sweet
laughter float out among the willows--enchanting, gay, care-free
laughter, where she had waded out into the shallow rapids and now stood
knee-deep, challenging her lover to follow her if he dared.
Then Helen saw his white-flannelled figure wading boldly out through the
water in pursuit; saw the slim, red-cloaked girl turn to flee; went
closer to the window and stood with the written message in her hand,
watching the distant scene through eyes dimmed with those illogical
tears which women shed when there is nothing else in the world to do.
It was plain that they thought themselves all alone in the world, with
the sunrise and the blue mountains as an agreeable setting, created as a
background for them alone.
Twice the girl narrowly escaped capture; above the rush of the river
their gales of laughter came back on the summer wind. Suddenly she
slipped, fell with a cry into a deeper pool, and was caught up by him
and carried shoreward, with her white arms around his neck and her lips
resting on his.
And as the tall young lover, dripping from head to foot, came striding
across the lawn with all he loved on earth laughing up at him in his
arms, the girl at the window turned away and went into her own room with
the written message in her hand.
And there, seated on the edge of her bed, she read it over and over,
crying, uncertain, wondering whether she might not withhold it for a few
hours more.
Because life is very wonderful, and youth more wonderful still. And
there is always time to talk of life and death when daylight dies and
the last laugh is spent--when shadows fall, and blossoms close, and
birds grow silent among the branches.
She did not know why she was crying. She had not cared for the dead
man.
She looked out through drawn blinds at the sunshine, not knowing why she
wept, not knowing what to do.
Then, from the hall came Stephanie's ecstatic voice:
"Helen! Wake up, darling, and come down! Because Jim and I have the
most wonderful thing in the world to tell you!"
But on the paper in her lap was written something more wonderful still.
For there is nothing more wonderful than that beginning of everything
which is called the end.