"Oh, there will always be something more! There always is--human love
being not only human! But--I have had an offer of a professorship--a
new chair that has lately been given in the University of the North."
He paused, as if waiting for a question from her; but she said nothing.
"You will go with me?" It was scarcely a question; she smiled,
remembering how he always took for granted that she would do his will.
"Of course," she said, quietly.
"It would mean great things for me," he went on, as one reading from an
open page. "The university, the quickening life there; the unlimited
power to search out; everything to work with, and then--success,
success and--fame!"
He paused, and drew a deep breath or two before he went on. When he
spoke again a new quality had come into his voice.
"But what if I do not go? What if I give it up? What if I stay here?"
He turned to her now, his eyes burning with his question; for, this
time, question indeed it was, and not the old demand.
"Will you stay with me?"
Her look grew softer, holding almost the reassuring sweetness of a
mother. It was as if she wished to smile away his doubt.
"Of course," she said, again.
She had long since come to know that he was the least given to
expressing his feelings when they were most deeply stirred. The very
intensity of his emotion seemed to bind him. Now he looked at her, and
he flushed very deeply; yet still he made no move to embrace her.
"You are made for the highest and best, Rosamund. I am offering you
only the commonplace!"
She looked off over the valley with unseeing eyes. She, too, had her
vision.
"'Only the commonplace!' What is that, John? Is it life, and love,
and service?"
"It may be," he said, and drew her to him.
She felt for his hand, and let her own creep under its warmth.
Together they looked again at the familiar scene before them, colored
now with their own dreams. Presently, recalling something of an
earlier time, she said.
"It's the land of content, John!"
He repeated the words, as if their music, but half understood, sounded
sweet in his ears. "The land of content?"
"They are Mother Cary's words," she told him. "Aren't they like
her--so quaint and true, and so wise! She told me once that we must
all know doubt and pain and sorrow, if we would cross the threshold of
happiness, into the land of content."
He said nothing; but she knew from his look that he was sharing her
vision.
"Cecilia--Eleanor--they think they know it, too, I suppose--poor dears!"
Ogilvie threw back his head and laughed. Then he looked at her with a
smile in his eyes--the smile, half tenderness and half pity, that we
give to a beloved child who thinks he has just discovered a new truth.
"And you are the only one who knows anything about it?" he teased.
"Oh, you, too!" she said.
"Thanks! I'm glad you let me in!" But he grew serious again. "Do you
know," he said, "I have a suspicion that your land of content is
wherever love is?"
She brushed his shoulder with her cheek. "I shouldn't wonder!" she
said.
But White Rosy was not interested in such speculation. Evidently
having decided that dinner was more to be desired than the view, she
set off down the road, at her briskest trot, toward the valley. They
laughed; but neither would have thought of restraining White Rosy when
she had taken the control of affairs upon herself.
"But I hate to come down from the high places," Ogilvie protested.
"She's an old tyrant, a materialist!"
He had brought from the intensity of his emotions all a lover's
clamoring to prolong the hour alone with the beloved. His visions now
went no farther than the sweet reality beside him.
She laughed back at him. "I'm not going to let you offend her, though;
I want to keep her always on my side. And we can take our high places
with us!"
That turned him serious again for the moment.
"Are you sure," he asked her, "that you can be satisfied to remain
here?"
"Here, or anywhere----" She paused, and he, reassured, smiled at her.
"Go on," he urged. "Go on! You were going to say something very nice
to me! I want to hear it!"
But she looked curiously embarrassed. "I--I was not going to say
anything of the kind! I was thinking of--something!"
Then she took her courage firmly in hand. "John," she said, "did you
guess that--that it was I--who--gave that professorship?"
His eyes opened wide. "Why, no!" he said. "Did you? Well, now, I
think that was a very good thing to do! How did you happen to think of
it?"
"Oh--it was a sort of thank-offering--and a sort of experiment."
He looked around at her. "Oh! It was! Well, don't you try any more
of your experiments on me!"
"John--have you known, all along, about--about my horrid money?"
He looked at her quizzically. "Well--yes. I knew. Oh, I knew, of
course! But--it isn't one of the things that counts, is it?"
He smiled at her, sure of her agreeing. She drew a long breath.
"No," she said, "it doesn't seem to be one of the things that count."
There seemed to be no further need for words; neither spoke again until
White Rosy stopped before Mother Cary's gate. Then Rosamund turned her
face toward Ogilvie.
"To-morrow!" she said.