At once Thorpe proved a great need of seeing her again.In his present mood there was nothing of the awe-stricken peace he had experienced after the moonlight adventure.He wanted the sight of her as he had never wanted anything before.He must have it, and he looked about him fiercely as though to challenge any force in Heaven or Hell that would deprive him of it.His eyes desired to follow the soft white curve of her cheek, to dance with the light of her corn-silk hair, to delight in the poetic movements of her tall, slim body, to trace the full outline of her chin, to wonder at the carmine of her lips, red as a blood-spot on the snow.These things must be at once.The strong man desired it.And finding it impossible, he raged inwardly and tore the tranquillities of his heart, as on the shores of the distant Lake of Stars, the bull-moose trampled down the bushes in his passion.
So it happened that he ate hardly at all that day, and slept ill, and discovered the greatest difficulty in preserving the outward semblance of ease which the presence of Tim Shearer and the Fighting Forty demanded.
And next day he saw her again, and the next, because the need of his heart demanded it, and because, simply enough, she came every afternoon to the clump of pines by the old pole trail.
Now had Thorpe taken the trouble to inquire, he could have learned easily enough all there was to be known of the affair.But he did not take the trouble.His consciousness was receiving too many new impressions, so that in a manner it became bewildered.At first, as has been seen, the mere effect of the vision was enough; then the sight of the girl sufficed him.But now curiosity awoke and a desire for something more.He must speak to her, touch her hand, look into her eyes.He resolved to approach her, and the mere thought choked him and sent him weak.
When he saw her again from the shelter of the pole trail, he dared not, and so stood there prey to a novel sensation,--that of being baffled in an intention.It awoke within him a vast passion compounded part of rage at himself, part of longing for that which he could not take, but most of love for the girl.As he hesitated in one mind but in two decisions, he saw that she was walking slowly in his direction.
Perhaps a hundred paces separated the two.She took them deliberately, pausing now and again to listen, to pluck a leaf, to smell the fragrant balsam and fir tops as she passed them.Her progression was a series of poses, the one of which melted imperceptibly into the other without appreciable pause of transition.So subtly did her grace appeal to the sense of sight, that out of mere sympathy the other senses responded with fictions of their own.Almost could the young man behind the trail savor a faint fragrance, a faint music that surrounded and preceded her like the shadows of phantoms.He knew it as an illusion, born of his desire, and yet it was a noble illusion, for it had its origin in her.
In a moment she had reached the fringe of brush about the pole trail.
They stood face to face.
She gave a little start of surprise, and her hand leaped to her breast, where it caught and stayed.Her childlike down-drooping mouth parted a little more, and the breath quickened through it.
But her eyes, her wide, trusting, innocent eyes, sought his and rested.
He did not move.The eagerness, the desire, the long years of ceaseless struggle, the thirst for affection, the sob of awe at the moonlit glade, the love,--all these flamed in his eyes and fixed his gaze in an unconscious ardor that had nothing to do with convention or timidity.One on either side of the spike-marked old Norway log of the trail they stood, and for an appreciable interval the duel of their glances lasted,--he masterful, passionate, exigent; she proud, cool, defensive in the aloofness of her beauty.Then at last his prevailed.A faint color rose from her neck, deepened, and spread over her face and forehead.In a moment she dropped her eyes.
"Don't you think you stare a little rudely--Mr.Thorpe?" she asked.
Chapter XL
The vision was over, but the beauty remained.The spoken words of protest made her a woman.Never again would she, nor any other creature of the earth, appear to Thorpe as she had in the silver glade or the cloistered pines.He had had his moment of insight.
The deeps had twice opened to permit him to look within.Now they had closed again.But out of them had fluttered a great love and the priestess of it.Always, so long as life should be with him, Thorpe was destined to see in this tall graceful girl with the red lips and the white skin and the corn-silk hair, more beauty, more of the great mysterious spiritual beauty which is eternal, than her father or her mother or her dearest and best.For to them the vision had not been vouchsafed, while he had seen her as the highest symbol of God's splendor.
Now she stood before him, her head turned half away, a faint flush still tingeing the chalk-white of her skin, watching him with a dim, half-pleading smile in expectation of his reply.
"Ah, moon of my soul! light of my life!" he cried, but he cried it within him, though it almost escaped his vigilance to his lips.
What he really said sounded almost harsh in consequence.
"How did you know my name?" he asked.
She planted both elbows on the Norway and framed her little face deliciously with her long pointed hands.
"If Mr.Harry Thorpe can ask that question," she replied, "he is not quite so impolite as I had thought him.""If you don't stop pouting your lips, I shall kiss them!" cried Harry--to himself.
"How is that?" he inquired breathlessly.
"Don't you know who I am?" she asked in return.
"A goddess, a beautiful woman!" he answered ridiculously enough.
She looked straight at him.This time his gaze dropped.
