Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v108.djvu/89

Rh had prophesied. She seemed to hold upon her open palm a world of promise. She was not only Winifred, but a type, and ecstasy trembled in him at the premonition of what life might be beside her. Yet he could only say,

"I was there and you would not speak to me!"

"I couldn't." Hot feeling rushed into her face and her eyes were wet. "I couldn't speak, any more than the soldier sent with orders. I had my task. I had things to learn without you. Ah, you would have laughed, Maurice,"—she laughed herself now, like a child,—to see me courting 'all outdoors' because that was your country. You know, up to that time I'd 'gone away' in the summer. I had botanized, and studied strata, and sat on piazzas and talked Dante. Heavens! dear, what a fool I'd been! It dawned on me the minute you threw me off—"

"No, Winifred, no!"

"Not consciously; but your honest soul denied me—it dawned on me what a poor shell of a thing I must have been to fail you so. And when I came here to learn my lesson, I lived out-of-doors. I looked. I listened all day long. I didn't study. There were no text-books. I haven't named the birds. They can fly high or low, for me. But I know, Maurice, I know what you see in the earth to make you paint it so. I have lived in the woods, Maurice, just like you. I could stay here all my days. I said to myself in the beginning, 'If there are any films between me and natural life, as that man feels it, I'll sweep them all away.' And I have done it."

The strangest part of it all was his conviction of her honesty. This was no new pageantry of a mobile brain. It was a return. The woman had always been of elemental stuff within. She had stripped away embroidery, and there it was—the heart of her.

"You did that," he said, "you lived all that out, here, alone—"

She came to her feet with a swift motion, fired by unconscious grace.

"No," she said, in a thrilling voice,—"no, I was not alone."

"You were not alone?"

"I had—your son."

"My—son!"

He also rose, and they faced each other in challenge and reply. She bent toward him, drooping with a pliant sweetness. Her face had melted. Her quivering mouth had curves in it.

"You left me in March," she said, with that humility of triumph springing from the glories that are given, not earned. "Your son was born before Thanksgiving." Then, as he looked at her, she put out her hands toward him with a cry: "Maurice, love me—love me!"

He took her into his arms, gently at first, from awe of that new sacredness about her, and kept her there, forgetting it. This was the renewing spring of love. She was his wife again, his by the moment's mystery as if no third creature had come to make her nature manifold. She drew away from him.

"You must be proud of him," she said, "your son. His legs are strong. There are such creases in them!"

She laughed, but the man could not echo her. The stress upon him had turned his face to quivering pallor, and she understood. He took his chair again, and she brought a stool and sat there at his side where his hands could cherish her and their cheeks might touch. He was broken with wonder over her.

"You stayed down here when he came?" he said. "In the snow, in this wild place!"

She laughed again with some whimsical pity for herself and the remembered drama of the time.

"Doctor Susan came and stayed with me. I had a nurse,—two nurses. I had everything. Yet, I said, other women, even without luxuries, have their children in this lonesome country. Why not I? Besides, I told you I had to be near you. That very night I saw your lamp. It was my star."

He held her hands hard, thinking swift thoughts he could not say. But she knew as if he had spoken.

"Yes," she said, "you would have come. But that was a part of my task, to stay away from you till I was different. No, dear, it was no risk. I am strong. When we are like that, when we love anything so—our spirits rule our bodies. We live through everything. I knew your child would be strong, too.