IX

Before Loring went away, an hour later, he put a fresh log on the fire,

smiling up at her shyly, as he knelt to do so.

"I'll mend the altar fire in your temple before I go, Selene," he had

murmured.

He felt strangely subdued and awed after the wonder of that kiss. The

enchantment that was over them held awe for them both. There was in it

something mystic--an influence blowing, as it were, from home-lands of

the soul dimly remembered. Sophy felt this consciously--Loring

unconsciously. But he felt things through her, since that kiss. There

had been between them during that long-blossoming kiss a transfusion of

spirit. She was through and through him like music--like sunlight

through the fibrils of a plant, from flower to root. And this subtle

fusion made him know just what to say and do to satisfy her. It was this

new-lent instinct that had made him so still after the wild magic of

that kiss had set his blood and spirit singing. When she had whispered

at last: "Go now ... dear...." he had risen without a protest. It was

then he had knelt to put the fresh log on her fire. Afterwards he had

bent and touched his lips to her hands as they lay together in her

lap--then to the shining, fire-warmed tress that flowed over her

shoulder. He had gone out, closing the door noiselessly as though she

were in some mysterious trance, and he feared to waken her.

As in a trance himself, he had fetched Proud Aleck from the old stable.

The horse had nickered when he heard him coming. In the fragrant

darkness of the stable, Loring had thrown an arm over the bay's neck.

"You brought me to her this night...." he whispered. He drew the

horse's muzzle towards him, and pressed his lips to the broad front. He

continued for some moments leaning against the great horse that quivered

with impatience to be gone. He felt faint and languid. It was as if he

had really been only mortal and she a goddess. His mortality seemed to

fail under the bliss of this contact with immortality. It was as though

sudden godhead had been bestowed on him and his flesh were consuming

under it into a finer essence.

There was no pride as yet in his wonder. That beautiful humility of real

love still held him. He was not even exultant that his "will" had won at

last. He did not feel as though he had conquered but as though some

great Winged Victory had caught him up and set him on this height, with

its veil of golden mist. It was not the kingdoms of the earth that were

offered him--but the kingdoms of the air ... starry places ... Diana's

cloud-land ... hanging-gardens of the gods....

Loring was rapt into the ecstatic state of "conversion."... He was

experiencing all the giddily rapturous throes and exquisite frenzies of

what is known as "revelation"--only its cause was not divine but human

love. He moved in a vision of clear light. Like Sophy, he was a stranger

to himself, yet he felt that this new self was not really the stranger,

but that old self which lay dark and shrivelled at the roots of being,

like the husk of a seed, from which has sprung the triumphing

blossom.... He rode home as on a wind of dreams. The splendid moon, now

soaring in mid-heaven, seemed set there as a symbol for him, and him

alone. "Selene.... Selene.... Selene...." went the hoofs of the great,

red horse, like the strokes of a Rhapsodist, beating time to the music

in his heart....

* * * * *

And Sophy, too, was all be-glamoured. She had heard the fairy-harp, she

had listened to music blown from the land of Heart's Desire. Ior, the

fairy chief, had kissed her eyes and lips. She was amazed, bemused--deep

down in her heart there was a great fear. Yet there was joy also. Not

the sane joy of everyday ... but a fragile, iridescent trembling as of a

dewy gossamer spun between the lintels of the door of Dreams. She was

afraid to move lest she should destroy this delicate, fine-spun joy.

Beyond its veil glimmered the wings of golden dreams. She knew well how

Diana must have felt after she had kissed the sleeping shepherd.

She was like one in some old-time fable, who gives a wanderer a cup of

water, and, lo! after drinking, the wanderer shakes back his cloak of

hodden-grey, and it is Eros himself glowing against the twilight--she

had entertained, unawares, the mightiest angel of them all. The soft,

electric plumes of Love had folded down upon her. She was smothered in

his sparkling wings, yet this lovely death only released her to new

life. It was only her self of later years that was dying softly. She

felt herself gleaming, slipping from the hard shell of years--a pearl

released, a pearl bathed in seas of wonder.

Back to her earliest girlhood she was washed ... back, back to that

shore where all is dream and miracle.... When she had loved Cecil, she

had not been so young; she was younger now than when she had wept over

her first lover's death. She was not only young--she was youth itself.

She was not standing outside the door of dreams as she had fancied, but

within it. That trembling, iridescent gossamer of joy shut out

reality--the past, the future--shut her in with the lovely

serving-maidens, dreams fulfilled.... It seemed to her that all the

poetry of the world was flowering in her heart. Her breast felt full of

roses ... red and white roses of love for every mood....

Her little travelling clock struck twelve. It seemed like the voice of a

malicious fairy rousing her from her too lovely trance. She started up.

The collie sprang up with her, and stood alert, ears cocked, eyes upon

her face. She looked about her dazedly. The room was not the same. It

gazed back at her with a new expression. She felt as if bodily she, too,

had grown different--were looking at the old, familiar objects from a

child's stature. The plants in the windows seemed larger. They were like

a fairy forest. As the firelight caught the crimson and purple bells of

the fuchsias, they seemed to sway--to ring forth a faint, wild music....

She put her hands to her face. This racing of her fancy was like a light

fever. And now when she glanced up again, she saw the fuchsias like

strange insects flying among their leaves. Their scarlet stamens were

like the frail legs of wasps drooped for flight.... She went up and

touched one softly, to assure herself that it was a flower. Fuchsias

were never like other flowers to her after that night.

She broke one off and took it with her upstairs. Her bedroom also

greeted her with a new look. The fire was almost out. She kneeled down

to mend it. As the flame sprang to life again beneath her fingers, she

thought of "The Witch of Atlas": ".... Men scarcely know how beautiful

fire is...." She knew. She knelt there, adoring the delicate flame,

purest and fiercest of elements. Yes--fire was purity itself. This

lovely fire in her own heart purified her. She was a Phoenix ... the

ashes of her life were only a soft, pale nest from which she had risen

thus glorious. Or no--the Dark Goddess had lain her on the coals of pain

... now she was immortal. This white flame within her was

immortality....

She slept fitfully but deliciously that night. Every little while she

would start awake. It was as if he spoke to her, saying: "Wake,

beloved--I, too, am wakeful...." It was delicious to wake thus and drift

delicately backward on the tide of dreams into that haven of light,

rapturous sleep. Love hummed about her like a fairy bee and stung reason

to numbness. All night long, sleeping or waking, phantasy rocked her

softly. The warm, firelit air seemed abeat with the wings of the white

doves of Venus....

* * * * *

When she woke fully next morning, Sophy thought at first that she had

been dreaming. Then all came back to her. She started up in bed. Fright

seized her--sheer, panic-terror. What had she done and felt? What had

come to her?...

Mammy Nan had kindled a roaring fire, and thrown wide the shutters. The

brilliant January sun streamed over the carpet. The sky was blue and

bitter, without a cloud. Naked and unashamed, the bold winter morning

glared in upon her. She shrank from it, feeling small and frightened

like a child stripped for a bath in the ocean which it sees for the

first time.

What had come to her?... Then she recalled the delicate clinging of that

young, ardent mouth, and her own blood submerged her, pulsing in one

shamed wave from head to feet.... She would not think. She sprang from

bed and plunged into the icy water of her morning bath that was all

netted with sunbeams. She dressed without knowing that she dressed. All

the time she kept saying within herself, "What has come to me?... What

has come to me?"

She went to the window--stared up at the cloudless blue that seemed to

swim with crystal beads as she gazed.

"My God, what has happened to me?... What is this that has happened to

me?" she asked. Lacing her fingers hard together, she kept murmuring:

"What is it?... My God!... what is it?"

She felt ridiculous and abased in her own sight; but the glamour was

stealing over her again. "It is impossible ... utterly impossible!" she

kept telling herself. Yet at the bottom of it all, shining up through

darkling depths, was that fairy-gold of joy, like the gold crown on the

head of the frog in the folk tale. Recalling this old fable of her

childhood, she laughed unwillingly. It was a wry laugh, indeed. "Yes,"

she told herself, "a frog with a gold crown--that is what this craziness

amounts to.... I am ridiculous ... ridiculous...!" She looked harshly at

her reflection in the mirror. "You are ridiculous," she said to it.

But there was more than her own absurdity to think of--there was Loring.

She had to consider him. And at the mere thought of him, again came that

frantic blush submerging her. What so ravaged her was the thought that

this wild, unreal feeling could not be love. Then she had kissed him,

had let him kiss her unworthily. She felt as though falling headlong

down abysses in her own nature of which she had never dreamed. Had she,

then, a wanton streak in her? Was she of that most contemptible breed of

mature women who like to scorch themselves delicately at the fires of

youth?

This so horrified her that she dropped into a chair, feeling physically

faint. She sat there so long that Mammy Nan put her head in at the door

and said severely: "Miss Sophy, yo' coffee's gettin' corpse-cold. Dee

bell done rang twict...."

Sophy obeyed the stern voice of Mammy Nan, from the instinct of a

hectored childhood. She rose at once and went meekly to drink the coffee

that she did not want. She actually ate a waffle under the tyrannical

gaze of her old nurse. It was like trying to swallow a bit of flannel.

She rebelled suddenly, and, laying down her knife and fork, said: "I'm

not hungry this morning, Mammy--I can't eat."

With this she went to her study--and found Loring standing before the

fire. How it happened, Sophy could not tell; but like a homing-pigeon

she went to him, and her head was on his breast, and his arms around her

without a word spoken. And as his arms went round her, she knew suddenly

that she was deathly tired. She also knew quite simply that, ridiculous,

impossible, fantastic as it might be, she loved him. This knowledge was

so soothing after the terrible idea that had come to her a little while

ago--the sick fear that her kiss had been only of the senses, no matter

how superfined--that she leaned against him in a sort of rapture of

repose. For the moment she was safe--afterwards the deluge. This

reassurance of her finer nature made all else seem trivial for the time

being. She loved him. She, the mature, bitterly experienced woman, loved

this youth! Well--it was ridiculous, but it was not unworthy. The higher

gods might laugh, but they could not turn from her in disgust.

"My Beautiful ... _my_ Beautiful!..." Loring was murmuring, his lips

against her hair.

That keen, fresh, wholesome scent of horse and leather and outer air

brought the past night back to her in one blinding flare. She stood so

silent that he began to laugh, low and nervously.

"I didn't sleep a wink all night, Selene.... I was with you in some

queer way. Did you feel me?... Or ... did you sleep?"

"No, dear...."

His arms tightened.

"Did love keep you awake too, my Beautiful--love ... for me?"

It was a whisper.

Sophy withdrew herself from his arms. She sank into the deep chair where

she had been sitting last evening, and, as then, he came and knelt

beside her. His eyes went thirstily to hers, and as she met those bold,

soft eyes, the scarlet leaped to her face.

"Oh! ... like a little girl...." he cried, enchanted. "You blush for me

like any little girl...."

Sophy blushed deeper still. Her voice faltered with shame for her own

foolishness of belated love. She really thought herself middle-aged at

thirty. The four years' difference in her age and Loring's seemed to her

an absurd, impassable gulf. This sense of shame braced her to reason

with him.

"Morris...." she began.

He broke into that low, exultant laughter which so confused her.

"Oh, little girl!" he cried again. "She is so young this morning that

she lisps.... She calls me 'Morrith.'" And indeed Sophy had lisped over

his name as she sometimes lisped in moments of excitement. She was

overwhelmed to feel another blush suffuse her. She bit her lip--tried to

frown, looking away from him into the fire. He continued laughing. His

laughter stirred the hair on her bent neck. Unwillingly she, too, began

to laugh. But this laughter was very near to tears. That subtle essence

of herself which she had imparted to him made him suddenly grave.

"What is it, my Wonder?" he asked softly. "I am listening...."

"Then ... dear...." she said very low, "this ... that has happened is

... beautiful ... but ... but it is only a dream.... We ... we must wake

now...."

"Bend down and see...." he whispered. "I am not dream-stuff, Beautiful.

Bend down to me again ... as last evening...."

"No, my dear ... no and no...."

"Then I must reach to you...."

She felt the flutter of his lips at her mouth's edge. She drew aside,

holding him from her. The words came quick and short.

"It is absurd. I am too old ... you are too young.... Heaven and earth

would laugh at us.... I am a woman who has lived through horrors ...

yes, horrors.... You are just at the beginning...."

"Yes ... just at the beginning--with you, my Wonderful!"

"My dear, dear boy...."

"'Boy' for your whim.... 'Man' to love you...."

"Oh, be reasonable!..."

"I wouldn't be reasonable for the throne of Caesar----"

"You _must_ be serious.... You _must_ let me talk seriously with you.

I.... I shall be offended if you do not. I shall think your love is only

froth."

This brought him upright, a queer gleam in his eyes.

"Well, then...." he said. It was his Marmion tone. It implied, "Come

one, come all; this rock shall fly from its firm base as soon as I."

"Go on, please...." he added, as she did not at once speak.

"Then," said Sophy, looking away from him, "you must think of last night

as ... as a 'Twelfth Night's' madness. Very sweet.... Yes, beautiful in

its way ... but just a moment's dream.... When you ... really love some

one ... you will know that it was only a dream...."

"'When I really love some one'?"

"Yes."

"You think that?"

"Yes."

"Would you mind looking at me?"

"No...."

But her eyes wavered, and the soft red ran up again into her face, as

she met that young, keen look, all fierce with wounded love.

"How _dare_ you say that I do not love you really?" he demanded, his

voice shaking with passion. "Even Selene didn't _trample_ on

Endymion----"

She went pale.

"My dear...."

"How can you call me 'your dear,' and yet set your foot down like

that--hard--right on my bare heart! How can you suggest that my love for

you is not real?"

He flung his arm about her suddenly--caught both her hands in his.

"Listen...." he said. "Perhaps because I bring you worship, too, you

think that I don't love you with man's love.... But it's because I love

you so madly that I bring you worship. I wouldn't soil the soles of your

shoes with what most men call love. I never believed in this kind ...

this that I feel for you. But, by God! I've found it _is_ real! It only

kneels because it's so strong. Because it's so strong, it has reverence.

Do you understand? Now give me your lips to worship. Don't waste them in

words. You needn't fear my kisses ... white Moon. I wouldn't sully you

with base fire."

He had drawn her to her feet. He held her crushed against him. His face

was white and fine with purifying fire.

Sophy felt awe steal over her. This was no boy that held her. His love

made him her equal. And he offered her what she had craved without

knowing it--the fire of love tempered with adoration.

"Give me your lips, my Wonder ... my white Wonder!" he was commanding,

yet there was also pleading in his voice. "Give me your lips, that I may

show you _how_ I love you ... not with gross hunger, but with thirst ...

divine thirst...."

That golden trance crept over her, as on the night before. Her head lay

drowned in its thick hair against his breast. He stooped slowly,

marvelling at the rapt beauty of her white, upturned face. Like a face

coming slowly towards her through deep waters, his face bent nearer.

There was that fine, quivering touch upon her lips--then their mouths

melted into one....

This kiss was no less marvellous than their first had been. But it held

this difference: With it she yielded herself consciously, though against

her judgment.

They stood there tranced, after this long kiss was over, as they had sat

hand in hand the evening before.

He said shakenly at last:

"'Too young'?... '_Too young_'--am I? God!--I feel as though I had been

from everlasting...."

X

But though Sophy yielded to these first bewildering moments of sudden

glamour, she was not in the least minded to enter into a long, unbroken,

spellbound dalliance. Loring found himself very short of kisses indeed

during the next few weeks.

Sophy, as it were, got her head above those heavy, golden waves. She

gasped deep of the fresh air of reason. She would not sink down to this

strange, love-lighted underworld without a final struggle for freedom,

for the clear daylight of common sense. He had to listen to much plain

speaking. Sometimes he sulked, sometimes fumed; usually he ended by

laughing with that low laughter against which she felt so oddly

helpless. There is nothing in the world more disconcerting than this

low, mocking laughter of love that knows itself stronger than reason. In

vain Sophy pointed out to him the difference in their ages, in their

tastes (this he furiously denied). She sternly bade him listen while she

read aloud from books that were her daily food. He listened with

heroism.

But one evening over Plotinus he actually nodded. They had been hunting.

The geranium-scented warmth of her study, the soft crackle of the fire,

her lulling contralto voice as she read aloud to him the words of the

mystic whom he privately thought "a hipped old Johnny" because he was so

ashamed of having a body that he wouldn't tell his birth-date ... (How

Loring despised him for this denial of ruddy life!)--these things,

together with the deep comfort of the old, leather armchair in which he

sat, caused him to doze pleasantly. He woke with a jerk, at the sudden

stopping of her voice. Her grey eyes were fixed on him over the volume

of Plotinus, cool and smiling.

"You see?" she said. "What rouses my soul puts you to sleep!"

Loring had looked at her sombrely.

"I'll tell you what _I_ think," he had said at last. "I think you fence

yourself about with these old philosopher Johnnies because you're afraid

of love. That's what I think, Beautiful."

Sophy had coloured, which always delighted him. He felt that he had won

when her blood rose at his words.

She pointed out to him the complications that would arise in their life

together, from the fact that Bobby would have to be educated in England.

"I couldn't possibly let him go there alone," she said. "His grandmother

dislikes me, as I've told you. She'd do all in her power to wean him

from me. And it's absolutely right and necessary that he should grow up

an Englishman...."

"He can grow up a Timbuctooan, for all I care," Loring had replied,

unmoved. "I've always wanted to hunt in the 'Shires. We can have a

country place near Melton...."

"You'd expatriate yourself?" Sophy asked severely.

"Nonsense, Diana! You're too Olympian sometimes. Good Americans can live

all over the place and still feel that 'little old New York is good

enough for them.'"

"There's another thing," Sophy had retorted: "I am sure that I shan't

care for New York--and as ... well, as Mrs. Loring, I should have to

live there...."

"Only a bit in the winter. And it would do you good, Beautiful. You like

homage--you know you do. You'd be first and beautifulest there. Thank

God, I'm so rotten rich!... You'll queen it, I can tell you."

"Are you so rich, Morris?"

"I am--rather. Why?"

"Because that's another thing.... I hate this over-richness of some

Americans. I feel as if my throat and eyes were full of gold-dust when

I'm with them. I don't mean I'm such a goose as to despise money--but I

do hate this ... this sort of golden Elephantiasis that deforms so many

Americans...."

Loring gazed up at her with wondering adoration.

"By George!" he said humbly, "it's downright awe-inspiring to feel that

you don't care a hang for my being rich. That you only care ... what

little you _do_ care ... for me, myself."

"'King Midas has the ears of an ass,'" Sophy had laughed, pulling the

one next her.

He had responded only too quickly to this slight caress. She had to put

both hands to her face to shield herself from his eager kisses.

"Ah, dearest--be kind.... Do.... Ah, do!" he had pleaded. But she had

said, "No.... I shall be sensible--if that's being unkind.... I won't be

rushed into elf-land by the hair of my head. I.... I won't be ...

_honeyfuggled_...."

And they had laughed together.

Sophy finally got quite desperate with the fruitless struggle against

him and against herself. She banished him ruthlessly for two weeks. He

rebelled in vain. "I _must_ have this time quite to myself," she told

him. "I _must_ think things out ... alone."

Loring found himself frantic thus exiled to the Macfarlanes, cut off

from his heart's desire by six country miles as by the powers of

darkness. He fled to Florida for a fortnight's tarpon-fishing. Then came

her letters. He thought he should go mad over those letters. She played

on him like the wind on water. Now he was all melting ripples under her

delicate words--now some phrase sent his passion leaping

mountain-high.... In the last letter she said: "Come back to me.... I

miss you as the rose misses the honey from her heart ... as the stem

misses the gathered flower.... I crave you as a sail might crave the

wild wind that gives it life. Dear ... my dearest.... I know now why the

'wisdom of men is foolishness to God.'... God is Love ... my wisdom is

foolishness to Love.... So I give you my foolish wisdom for a carpet

under your feet. And my wise foolishness I give you for a seal upon your

heart.... But myself I cannot give you, for I was yours when Love spread

the foundations of the world...."

For she had found when Loring was far from her that "her heart was

within him." She found the plain, wheaten bread of Philosophy dreary

fare without the honey of romance. Poetry fled from her like a wild, shy

bird, that would only come to one call. With his name she could lure it.

She wrote page after page of love-verse as a sort of bridal offering for

his return. She knew that there was madness in her mood, but it seemed a

high and holy sort of frenzy--like the spiritual dementia that sends

martyrs singing to the pyre. So she sung amid the flames that so

exquisitely consumed her. For this was not a usual passion that she felt

for Loring. She would have preferred that their love-life should be one

long, ecstatic betrothal. She would have liked to give him the flower of

love without its fruit. Yet his love was so different from all other

loves that she had known ... it was so finely winged--so woven with

adoration ... so fresh as with the dews of youth's first dawn; in her

the answering love was so immaculate, veiled with imagination as for a

first communion; all was so beautifully and perfectly harmonious between

them, that she could not imagine discord ever following on this

enchanted symphony.

And granted that their tastes were not always the same ... granted that

she was older, that he seemed but a boy to her at times--must love mean

oneness in all things? Was not oneness of heart and spirit enough? And

was not woman immemorially older than man--the first created, but not

the first conceived?--Did not the Christian faith give even God a

mother, as if Divinity itself must needs be child of the eternal

feminine?

And because the great, tender mother in her cherished Loring, the shy,

wild lover in her only loved him more.