“Oh, I'm so GLAD to get you back!” cried Carroll over and over again,
as she clung to him. “I don't live while you're away. And every drop of
rain that patters on the roof chills my heart, because I think of it as
chilling you; and every creak of this old house at night brings me
up broad awake, because I hear in it the crash of those cruel great
timbers. Oh, oh, OH! I'm so glad to get you! You're the light of my
life; you're my whole life itself!”--she smiled at him from her perch on
his knee--“I'm silly, am I not?” she said. “Dear heart, don't leave me
again.”
“I've got to support an extravagant wife, you know,” Orde reminded her
gravely.
“I know, of course,” she breathed, bending lightly to him. “You have
your work in the world to do, and I would not have it otherwise. It is
great work--wonderful work--I've been asking questions.”
Orde laughed.
“It's work, just like any other. And it's hard work,” said he.
She shook her head at him slowly, a mysterious smile on her lips.
Without explaining her thought, she slipped from his knee and glided
across to the tall golden harp, which had been brought from Monrovia.
The light and diaphanous silk of her loose peignoir floated about her,
defining the maturing grace of her figure. Abruptly she struck a great
crashing chord.
Then, with an abandon of ecstasy she plunged into one of those wild and
sea-blown saga-like rhapsodies of the Hungarians, full of the wind in
rigging, the storm in the pines, of shrieking, vast forces hurtling
unchained through a resounding and infinite space, as though deep down
in primeval nature the powers of the world had been loosed. Back and
forth, here and there, erratic and swift and sudden as lightning the
theme played breathless. It fell.
“What is that?” gasped Orde, surprised to find himself tense, his blood
rioting, his soul stirred.
She ran to him to hide her face in his neck.
“Oh, it's you, you, you!” she cried.
He held her to him closely until her excitement had died.
“Do you think it is good to get quite so nervous, sweetheart?” he asked
gently, then. “Remember--”
“Oh, I do, I do!” she broke in earnestly. “Every moment of my waking and
sleeping hours I remember him. Always I keep his little soul before me
as a light on a shrine. But to-night--oh! to-night I could laugh and
shout aloud like the people in the Bible, with clapping of hands.” She
snuggled herself close to Orde with a little murmur of happiness. “I
think of all the beautiful things,” she whispered, “and of the noble
things, and of the great things. He is going to be sturdy, like his
father; a wonderful boy, a boy all of fire--”
“Like his mother,” said Orde.
She smiled up at him. “I want him just like you, dear,” she pleaded.