Their eyes met an instant; then they laughed together happily.
"You're right," he acknowledged. "It seems I don't know either of you.
But we can't talk here, can we? We need--" He paused, then, "Give me
this day," he entreated. "We're not strangers. Say you will!"
As they issued upon the pavement, the driver of a passing cab raised
an interrogative whip. Atwood nodded, and a moment afterward they
had edged into the traffic of one of the avenues and were rolling
northward. To Jean, reveling silently in her first hansom, it seemed
that they had scarcely started before they turned in at one of the
entrances of Central Park, and for a time followed perforce the
flashing afternoon parade before striking into a less frequented
roadway, where they dismounted. Atwood, too, had said nothing amidst
the jingling ostentation of the avenue and main-traveled drives, and
he was silent now as they forsook the asphalt walks for quiet paths,
where their feet trod the good earth, and the odor of leaf mold rose
pungently.
Presently he halted.
"Will you shut your eyes for a little way?" he asked. "It's my whim."
She assented, and they went forward slowly, her hand upon his sleeve.
She felt the path drop, by gentle slopes at first, then with sharp
turns past jutting rocks, where there seemed no path at all. Her sense
of direction failed her, and with it went her recollection of the
city's nearness. The immediate sounds were all sylvan. She heard the
call of a cat-bird, the bark of a squirrel, the laughing whimper of
a brook among stones, which she guessed, if her ear had not lost its
woodcraft, merged its peevish identity in some neighboring lake or pool.
"Now," said her guide, pausing.
She looked, started, and rounded swiftly upon Atwood to find him
beaming at her instant comprehension.
"It might be the very same!" she exclaimed.
"Mightn't it? The birches, the shore-line--"
"And the stream, even the little stream! Could I find watercress
_there_, I wonder?"
The man laughed.
"Ah, it is real to you! I, too, forgot New York when I first stumbled
on it. I even _looked_ for watercress. But it knows no such purity,
poor little brook! I've had to pretend with it, as I've pretended with
the lake. The landscape-gardener was a clever fellow. He makes you
believe there are distances out there--winding channels, unplumbed
depths; he cheats you into thinking you have a forest at your back.
Sometimes he has almost persuaded me to cast a clumsy line into that
thicket yonder."
Jean's look returned to him quickly. He was smiling, but with an
undercurrent of gravity.
"You know it well," she said.
"I ought. It was here, the summer after we met, that I came to realize
something of what I had asked you to do. I began to study refuges. I
went to such as I could, boys' places, mainly; I even tried to get
sight or word of you. Somehow, though, I never came at the right
official, and it seemed that men weren't welcome. I learned a few
things, however. I grubbed among reports; I found out what your daily
life was like, what your companions must be, and once I saw a newspaper
account of a riot. But of you I heard nothing. How could I? I did not
even know your name--I, your judge!"
The girl moved toward the border of the lake and for a space stood
looking dreamily into its tranquil counterfeit of changing foliage and
September sky. To the miracle of their meeting was added the revelation
that even as he had filled her thoughts in the dark days, so had she
possessed his.
"Will you sit here?" he asked, again beside her. "I want to hear the
whole story--the story which began back among the other birches."
"It began farther back than there."
"Not for me."
"But it should. If you thought about me at all, you must have wondered
how I came to be in a refuge uniform."
"I wondered, yes; but I never really cared. I could see with my own
eyes what you were."
She searched his face with the skepticism which the world had taught,
then, with a swift intake of breath, looked believing away.
"We must begin at the beginning," she said.
She told him her story as she had told it to the dentist that hideous
night of explanations at the Lorna Doone, but where Paul's black
silence had stifled her, lamed her speech, made her almost doubt
herself, this listener's faith leaped before her words, bridged the
difficult places where she faltered, spread the cloak of chivalry in
the miry way. Yet, with all his sympathy, it hurt her, so senseless
always seemed the reckoning for her follies, so poignant were her
regrets, and once, when she began to speak of Stella and the riot, he
stopped her.
"Don't go on," he begged. "I see what it costs you."
"I'd rather you heard it all," she replied. "It's your due."
Nevertheless, she did not tell him all. She could speak of Stella,
of Amy, of young Meyer, of the floor-walker, but no word of Paul
passed her lips. She let Atwood infer that the stigma of the refuge
had driven her from Grimes's employ, as it had thrust her from the
department store. The whole chain of circumstances which the dentist's
name connoted had become suddenly as inexplicable to herself as to this
transcendent hero of a perfect day.
The sun was low when she made an end, and the long-drawn shadows of the
birches in the lake turned their thoughts again to that other sundown.
"You were a lonely little figure as I looked back," he said. "I took
that picture with me through the hills, and it remained my sharpest
memory. It was a sad memory, a mute reproach, like the poor things I
bought for you to wear."
"Then you did get them!" she cried, her dress instinct astir. "What
were they like?"
"I will show them to you some day."
"You've kept them? I must pay my debt."
He shook his head. "They're not for sale. You shall see them when you
come to my studio."
"You are an artist, too?"
"I paint," he replied simply. "When you are not busy with MacGregor,
you will find work with me. We'll arrange that among us. Old Mac little
dreams our secret."
"It is a secret?"
"With me, at any rate. I've never told. You see"--he looked away with a
sudden diffidence almost boyish; then back again with a temerity that
was boyish, too--"you see, I was jealous of my memories. I wanted to
keep them wholly to myself. Our meeting was--how shall I say it?--a
kind of idyl. And you--have you told?"
"Never."
"Was it partly for my reason?"
"Yes," she answered; "partly for your reason."
"But those clothes," he said, after a moment, "you'll smile when you
see them. I've tried many a time to imagine you wearing them, braving
the world as you planned so stoutly. Perhaps it would have been no
harder than the other way. Perhaps--but that's over with, thank heaven!
You've earned your freedom and have a brighter lot than a fugitive's
to face. I don't mean a model's life. That will be temporary. There's
something in you, something fine that only needs its chance. I can't
tell you how I know this any more than I can tell you what it is, but
I believe in it as I believe in my own existence. I know it's true, as
true as the fact that we stand here face to face."
By some necromancy of the mind he mirrored back her own vague hopes.
"But I am a woman," she said, eager for more.
"So much the better. You live in woman's day. But don't forget that you
have given me a part of it," he added, as she rose. "My own particular
solar day isn't ended yet. When we first met, you had me to luncheon,
or was it breakfast? I'm going to return the courtesy."
"But--"
"You couldn't be more appropriately dressed for a park restaurant," he
cut in, pursuing her glance. "They'll serve us under an arbor where the
wistaria blooms in May. We'll have to pretend about the wistaria, but
it ought to be easy. The great pretense has come true."