CHAPTER XXVI--THE HAUNTED WOOD

Life at its beginning and its end is bounded by a haunted wood. When no

one is watching, children creep back to it to play with the fairies

and to listen to the angels' footsteps. As the road of their journey

lengthens, they return more rarely. Remembering less and less, they

build themselves cities of imperative endeavor. But at night the wood

comes marching to their walls, tall trees moving silently as clouds and

little trees treading softly. The green host halts and calls--in the

voice of memory, poetry, religion, legend or, as the Greeks put it, in

the faint pipes and stampeding feet of Pan.

We have all heard it. Out of fear of ridicule we do not talk about it.

Do we revisit the wood, it is when sleep, or the dream of death, has

claimed us and made us again children.

Because secrecy adds to happiness, Kay and Peter told no one of

their discovery. In the early morning they would tricycle out through

red-brick suburbs, where nurse-girls wheeled fretful babies in prams

and wondered what love meant. Having spent their day in fairyland, they

would tricycle back through those same brick suburbs where tethered

people found romance in twilit reality. They almost feared to speak

aloud of their doings, lest speech should break the spell--lest, were

they to tell, they might search in vain for Friday Lane, Canute, and

Harry of the mouth-organ, and find them vanished.

On their first visits they did not meet the Faun Man; in proportion as

they failed to meet him, they grew more curious about him. Sometimes

they were quite certain he was there, but Harry---- He was strangely

reluctant to share him--as reluctant as Peter was to share his sister.

And yet, in-all the rest of his secrets he was generous. He showed

them how to find beneath stones in the river the homes of fishes--tiny

fellows, who darted away with agitated tails the moment you took the

roofs off their houses. And he showed them how you could make whistles

out of boughs, if you chose the right ones. He taught them to mimick the

notes of birds, so that they would follow through the woods, answering

and hopping, twisting from side to side their perky heads. He was the

Pied Piper of the open world, and willing to make them his confederates.

“Where--where did you learn?” They asked him. Sometimes he looked away

from them, narrowing his eyes; sometimes he answered, “The Faun Man--he

taught me.” So the Faun Man became a kind of god, whose handiwork was

seen in many wonders, but who never showed himself.

It was a scorching afternoon. In London water-carts were going up and

down; the less refined portion of mankind had removed their collars and

had knotted handkerchiefs about their necks. Along Green Lanes and as

far as Jolly Butcher's Hill, costers tempted villadom to extravagance,

crying, “Strarberries. Fresh strarberries,” in voices grown cracked from

over-use and thirst. It made one's throat dry to listen to them. The

tricycle seemed to feel its weight of years; despite frequent oiling,

it insisted on running heavily. At Aunt Jehane's house they halted for

a rest; then, on again. The country drowsed: big trees in the meadows

seemed to fold their hands; birds had hidden themselves; there was

scarcely a sound.

When they came to the gate leading into Friday Lane, Harry wasn't there.

Pushing the machine behind a hedge, they went in search of him. They

called his name and paused to listen. He had tricked them before, trying

to make them believe that they wouldn't find him, then startling them

into laughter by playing his mouth-organ in a tree right above their

heads. They persuaded themselves that that was what was happening now.

Every few steps they would stop and look up into the boughs, shouting,

“We've found you. We know where you're hiding. You may as well come

down.” If he heard them, he refused to fall into their trap.

They came to the Haunted Wood and entered. In its dark green shadows,

where all things trod softly, they dared not shout. They whispered their

assertion that they had guessed his whereabouts. Only the little river

answered, now mocking them secretly, now babbling hoarsely, alarmed that

it would never get out. They began to tiptoe. Fear of the silence seized

them. A branch cracked; they only just saved themselves from running.

It seemed as though a magician had waved his wand, casting a spell;

everything slept. Everything except the river--and at last, because its

voice was solitary, it became terrible, like that of a dying man in a

shuttered room, who muttered deliriously and tossed upon his bed.

The green stretch of grass, with the cowslips scattered over it, brought

relief to their suspense. But, here again, there was no welcome. Bees

hummed above the flowers, quite indifferent to their presence. The

bee-hive cottage stood with door and windows wide, as though its

inhabitants had been called away suddenly and would never return.

Beneath the smiling of the summer stillness lay the threat that

something evil had happened. Even Canute had vanished.

They stole round the house and at last crossed the threshold. Everything

was as they remembered it, even to the mandolin lying across the

chair. They listened. Voices! Yes, certainly. Then laughter, clear and

pleasant; it broke off in the middle, as if someone paused for breath.

It came from the Faun Man's room overhead, which Harry had never invited

them to enter. Hand-in-hand they' climbed the stairs--steep and narrow

stairs, which ended abruptly in a white door. They tapped. A man

answered. Peter raised the latch.

The ceiling sloped down from the centre, giving to the room the

appearance of a tent. There were two lattice-windows, on opposite sides,

which opened outward on to the thatch. Against one of them stood a desk,

littered with papers, from which a rush-bottomed chair had been pushed

back. A pen, lying on a sheet of partly written foolscap, had rolled

across it, leaving blots, as if the writer had put it down and turned

hastily at the sound of someone's entrance. In one corner of the room

there was a high-peaked saddle and on the walls a strange collection of

memories and travel--a study of a girl's head by Rossetti, old Indian

muskets used in frontier warfares, a pair of sabres, a college oar with

the names of the crew gilded on it, and everywhere the faces of women.

Among them one face occurred often--Peter had noticed its frequence on

the walls downstairs. And now he saw the living woman before him.

She was dressed in white, lying on a rose-colored couch, stretched out

carelessly full-length, with her small feet crossed. Her age might have

been anywhere from twenty upward. It didn't matter--one forgot years

and only thought of youth in looking at her. Was not Helen past mid-life

when two continents went to war for her beauty? Somehow she reminded one

of Helen--was it the way in which experience mixed with artlessness in

her expression? The mind went back. Dr. Faustus might have addressed his

sonorous lines to her:

“Was this the face that launched a thousand ships?

And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?

Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss:

Her lips suck forth my soul, see where it flies:

Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again.

Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips.”

She was golden, splendidly negligent of what was happening about her,

insolently languid with a lazy ease that seemed to take all the world

into her confidence and actually shut all the world out. She was a

lonely tower of snow and ice, rosy in the sunlight, luring, cold and

inaccessible. Her eyes were intensely blue and innocent. She had fine

teeth and an almost childish mouth, which was contradicted by the

powerful molding of her chin and throat, and the capability of her

hands. One wondered what difference it would make to her if she were

ever to be roused by love or anger. She was built on heroic lines,

long and full and gracious, yet she seemed to prefer to be treated as

a plaything. One arm was curled beneath her golden head, the other hung

down listlessly and was held by a man who was pressing the hand to his

mouth. Peter noticed in a flash how the woman paid no attention to what

the man was doing. And the man----

Peter had never seen anyone quite like him. He was tall and strong and

slender. Even though he was kneeling, Peter knew that he must be of

great height. His face was smooth, lean and tanned. His lips were

thin--unusually red and delicate for a man's. His nose was straight and

arched at the nostrils. His ears were set far back and pointed. But it

was by his eyes that Peter recognized him as the Faun Man. They were

brown and filmed over with blue like a dog's, showing scarcely any

white. They had a dumb appeal in them, a hunger and melancholy because

of something which was never found, which the eager happiness of

the rest of his appearance disguised. They had a trick of veiling

themselves, of becoming dull and focusless, as though the spirit, whose

windows they were, had drawn down the blinds and lay drugged with

sleep and satiety. Then suddenly they would flash, become torches, all

enthusiasm, crying out that there was no truce in the forward march of

desire. At such times the face became extremely young--as young as his

long fine hands. Only the black hair, brushed straight back from the

forehead without a parting, betrayed his age by the gray which grew

about the temples.

The golden woman withdrew her hand from his, and raised herself on her

elbow at the children's entrance. She gazed at them doubtfully, like a

young pantheress disturbed. Her red mouth pouted. Her blue eyes feigned

a laughing shyness. Only one small foot, tapping against the other, told

of her impatience. “Oh, it isn't---- I thought it was Harry. Who are

they, Lorie?”

Her voice was soft and caressing. She spoke in the “little language”

which mothers learn in the nursery. In her way of talking there was a

guttural quality which marked her foreign parentage.

The Faun Man, unabashed by the unexpected company, bent toward her and

kissed her arm. “I don't know,” he laughed. Then he turned with a smile

that was all courtesy and kindness, “Won't you tell us? Who are you?”

Peter didn't answer at once. He was fascinated. He had never seen a

man's ears move like that. As the Faun Man had asked his question, his

ears had pricked up as a dog's do when he pays attention. And then there

was something about his voice---- It was so sad and intense.

It hurt by its longing. It didn't seem right to meet this man in a

house. Peter both distrusted and liked him--the way we do nature.

The white room became a blur as he gazed into the soft brown eyes. Woods

and meadows, seen distant in the sunlight, became flat like painted

canvases hung across the windows. Real things grew vague, or took on the

aspect of artificiality. The question came again. “Tell us, little chap.

Who are you?”

Peter's brain cleared. “If you please, we're friends of Harry, the boy

with the mouth-organ.”

The golden woman leant forward, resting her hand intimately on the Faun

Man's shoulder. She was interested and her face became gentle. “Harry's

friends! But we're in disgrace with Harry. He's run away with Canute

because--because he's jealous. He wants his big brother all to

himself---- What shall we do with them, Lorie? I think we'll have to

make them our pals.”

Kay had been hiding behind Peter in the doorway. She looked round him

timidly, still ready for escape. “But--but will Harry come back?”

The concern in her voice made the woman clap her hands. “He always comes

back. Men always do come back, don't they, Lorie?” She slipped her feet

off the couch and came across the room. “What a dear little girl!”

Kay looked up at her, willing to be frightened. Then her arms reached up

and the woman stooped over her. “You're nice,” she said.

“Have you been here often?” It was the Faun Man speaking.

Peter thought. He tried to reckon. “Not often, but several times.”

The Faun Man took him by the shoulders, looking down on him. Seen that

way, from below, he seemed tremendously high. “You needn't be afraid,

young 'un; I'm not angry. You won't get Harry into a row. Where d'you

come from?”

“Come from!” Peter laid his fingers on the thin brown hand. “Would you

mind very much if I didn't tell? You see, Harry doesn't know. It's such

fun--we're just pretence people. We tricycle out from--from nowhere on

a tandem, Kay and I. And then we meet Harry and leave the trike behind

a hedge and go into the Haunted Wood together. You see, if Harry doesn't

know who we are, it's almost as though we were fairies, and as though he

were a fairy, and we---- You know what I mean: we meet in fairyland, and

can do what we like with the world.”

The Faun Man turned his head. “Eve, did you hear that? He wants to do

what he likes with the world. He's one of us.”

But Eve had Kay on her lap and her lips were in her silky hair.

Something had happened to her--something difficult to express. She

had melted. With the child pressed against her bosom, she looked a

mother--very young and good. As the Faun Man watched her, his eyes

became tender--oddly tender.

“Eve. Eve.”

He went over to her and took her hand. She lifted her face to his. “If

you hadn't kept me waiting----” He got no further.

There was a pause.

“I was thinking the same,” she said; “and yet----”

“And yet?” he questioned.

She drew Kay nearer to her. “Where's the good of talking. We've talked

so often--so often.”

He went to the open window and stared out. A butterfly flew in and

alighted on his forehead. He took no notice; he stood rigid like a man

of stone. A little muscle in his cheek kept twitching; his arms hung

straight down and the fingers worked against the palms of his hands.

Seen on either side of him, in two narrow strips, was the basking

unimprisoned country, which rolled on marvelously, this visible

landscape building into the next, and the next into all the others that

lay beyond the horizon, continents, seas and wonderlands, like a carpet

of ever-changing pattern wrapped about the world for his feet to tread.

And he, without bonds, was a prisoner.

He swung round. To Peter's surprise he was laughing. His dark face was

narrow in mockery. “Come on, young 'un,” he said; “let's get out.”

He had to double himself up to pass down the low-ceilinged stairway.

Peter followed; in leaving the room, he glanced back. The golden woman

had raised her eyes--the eyes of a child who has been selfish and has

wounded itself. She was fondling Kay, as though she thought that her

kindness to the little girl would atone for her unkindness to the man.

As he crossed the living-room, the Faun Man picked up the mandolin from

the chair. He did not walk through the garden; he walked into it. That

was his way with everything. Leaving the path, he pressed waist-deep

through roses and fuchsias, scattering their blooms and petals. Like

soldiers approving his lawlessness, sunflowers swayed their golden heads

and nodded. Swarms of winged insects, whose homes he had disturbed,

rose up in busy protest. His face was wrinkled with determination to be

glad--to be glad whatever might lie in the future. In the heart of the

fragrant nature-world he halted, and sat down on the hard-baked earth.

He looked like a great supple hound with his legs crouched under him.

Through the walls of their house of leaves and blossoms they could see

the window of the room they had left.

The Faun Man commenced to tune his mandolin. “Ever been in love, Peter?”

The boy reddened. He didn't know why he reddened. Perhaps he was proud

that he should be asked such a question. Perhaps he was a little angry

because--well, because everyone he had ever met seemed a little ashamed

of love--everyone except the Faun Man. So he answered, “Only with my

little sister.”

The man laughed. “That isn't what I meant. That's different. Love's

something that burns and freezes. It fills you and leaves you hungry. It

makes you forget all other affections and keeps you always remembering

itself. It makes you kindest when it's most cruel. It demands everything

you possess; and you're most eager to give when it gives you nothing

back. It's hell and it's heaven. No, I'll tell you what it is. It's a

small child pulling the wings off a fly, and then crying because it's

sorry, and didn't know what it was doing. Ah, Peter, Peter, you haven't

met love yet.” He bent forward and tapped him on the arm. “Be wise. Run

away when you see love coming.”

Peter felt embarrassed. The Faun Man closed one eye and watched

him--watched how the sun splashed through the creeping shadows and fell

on the boy's flushed face and curly hair. “Here's a little song about

love,” he said. “A very high class song, written not improbably by the

poet Shelley.”

He struck the strings of the mandolin, playing a little jingling

introduction and then commenced, lifting his long face to the window

in the thatch, singing through his nose and burlesquing all that had

happened:

“If yer gal ain't all yer thought 'er,

And fer everyfing yer've bought 'er

She don't seem to care a 'appenny pot o' glue;

If she tells yer she won't miss yer

And she doesn't want ter kiss yer,

Though yer've cuddled 'er from 'Ammersmif ter Kew;

If yer little side excurshiums

To lands of pink nasturtiums

Don't make 'er 'arf so soft as they make you,

Why, never get down-'earted,

For that's the way love started--

Adam ended wery 'appy--and that's true.”

He had scarcely finished, when the golden woman came to the lattice in

the thatch. She stood framed there, with the whiteness of the room as a

background. Her hands were crossed upon her breast. The shining masses,

wrapped about her head and forehead, accentuated her vivid paleness. She

looked as idealized as a girl on canvas, put there by her lover in a bid

for immortality. She glanced this way and that to discover the Faun Man.

She leant out, listening and searching. She could not detect him.

“Lorie,” she cried, addressing the garden, “you're unkind. I hate

you when you're flippant.” She waited for him to answer. Nothing but

silence, and the little river whispering to itself beyond the hedge.

“Lorie, I suppose you think I've got no right to talk about being

flippant, because---- But I'm not flippant. I like you, and----

But I can't help myself if God made me as I am.” Again she waited.

“Lorie, I'll be awfully nice to you if you'll only show yourself. I do

so want to see----”

The Faun Man stood up ecstatically, with his arms stretched out to her.

It was absurd to call him a man. The pollen of flowers had smirched his

face and hands. His head was bare, and the hair had fallen forward over

his forehead.

“I'm crying for the moon,” he chanted, “and because she won't come

down to me I'm calling her names--saying that she's a Gorgonzola cheese

flying through the heavens.”

“My Lord,” laughed the golden woman--she pronounced it Looard, in her

most foreign accent; “what an imagination you have!”

“Jump down,” urged the Faun Man; “I'll catch you, little Eve. I'd catch

you and carry you anywhere.”

She thought and slowly shook her head, as if she had been considering

his suggestion as a feasible, if unconventional, plan of descent. “I'd

rather trust the stairs.”

“You'd rather trust anything than trust me,” he said ruefully; “but I

don't care, so long as you do come down.” She was leaving the window,

when she turned back. “What was that silly song you were singing?”

He answered her promptly. “Words by Shelley. Accompanied by Lorenzo

Arran. Title, 'A Bloke and 'is 'Arriet.' Scene laid in London. All

rights reserved.” She pulled a face, exceedingly provocative and

naughty. “Words by Shelley, indeed! But I can believe all the rest.”

She vanished.

The Faun Man turned to Peter. “You see, young fellow, it's as I told

you. Love's always like that. It comes to a window and looks down at

you. You hold out your arms to it and say, I want you.' Love came to the

window that you might say that; but the moment you say it, love shakes

its head. If you told it to walk decently down the stairs to you, it

would immediately fling itself over the sill and toboggan down the

thatch. You're fool enough to say to it, 'Slide down the thatch,' and

it immediately walks decently down the stairs. If I were you, Peter, I'd

never fall in love with anybody.”

Then Peter surprised himself; he mimicked something he had just heard.

“My Looard!” he said, “I'm never going to.”

The Faun Man held his sides and threw back his head, laughing loudly.

That was how the golden woman found him when she came with her arm about

Kay's neck. She halted on the path, six feet away, smiling at him across

the barricade of flowers. She cuddled the little girl closer to her.

“Aren't men funny, Kay?” And then, slanting her face and stooping with

her neck, “Lorie, you queer boy, what's the matter now?”

The Faun Man waded through the roses to her, catching her by the

shoulders and bending over her. “Peter's the matter. I was telling him

never to fall in love with anybody, because--well, because love's cruel

and only looks out of a window in order to go away and leave the window

vacant. And what d'you think he said? I'm never going to.' He said it

sharply like that, as if I'd been telling him never to be a pickpocket.

Fancy a little boy having made up his mind never to walk in the sunlight

because the sunlight scorches.”

“Ah, but he did not mean it.” She spoke as though Peter had been unkind,

and had said that he would not love her. “But he did not mean it,” she

repeated, tilting Peter's face up in her hollowed hand. “And love isn't

cruel--he mustn't believe what Lorie says. Love is the flowers and the

dusk falling, and the sound of birds and rivers, and the dearness of

little children. Love is---- How shall I put it? Love is eyes in the

head. Without love one can see nothing.”

Peter gazed into her eyes. She was charming. He felt as though he had

hurt her. And he felt that, if he had hurt her, he ought to go

all across the world on his knees and hands till he obtained her

forgiveness. He remembered afterward that, when her eyes were on his, he

saw nothing but blue--just her eyes and nothing else.

“He didn't mean it, did he?” she coaxed.

In a very small voice he answered, “I did mean it. You see, there's Kay;

I have to love her.”

“But some man may love Kay presently--may take her away from you. What

then?”

Peter had never thought of that. He wouldn't think of it now, just as

years later he refused to face up to it. “Kay would never allow anyone

to take her. Would you, Kay?” Kay shook her head. “I only want Peter.”

She freed herself from the golden woman and went and stood beside her

brother with her arm about him--an arm so small that it wouldn't come

all the way round.

The man and woman stared at them. Here was something outside their

experience. They had found hard knocks in the world and occasional

stolen glimpses of tenderness--not a tenderness which one could carry

about as a thing expected, could arrange life by, and refer to as to a

timepiece in the pocket. Both were conscious of a hollowness in their

living. And the woman--she had dreaded permanency in affection lest it

should become a chain to gall her.

A shadowy hurdler, very distant as yet, over trees and fields and

hedges, evening came vaulting. No one could hear his footsteps, only

the panting of his breath. He was racing from the great red door in the

west, from which he had slipped out--racing, with his head turned across

his shoulder, as though he feared to see a presence on the burning

threshold and to hear a voice that would call him. The small applauding

hands of leaves moved gently. The red door sank lower. Snared in the

branches of the Haunted Wood, it came to rest.

Far away and out of sight, deep-toned and mellow, came the lowing

of cattle and the staccato barking of a dog, driving the herd to the

milking. One by one live things of the country-side commenced to wake

and stir. Rabbits hopped out among the cowslips and nibbled at the turf.

Birds, like children put to bed and frightened of being left, called

“Good-night. Good-night. Good-night,” over and over. From watch-towers

of tall trees mother-birds answered, “Good-night. Good-night.

Good-night.” The world had become maternal. The spirit of life's

brevity, of parting, of remembrance, of regret, of happiness withheld

was in the air. The golden woman felt her loneliness. Looking at the

children, so defiant in their sureness of one another, she recalled her

lost opportunities.

An arm stole about her. A brown hand covered hers. She leant back her

head so that it lay against the Faun Man's jacket. So many things seemed

worth the seeking in this world--so few worth the keeping when found.

For the moment she liked to fancy that her search was at an end.

Peter spoke. “If you please, I think we must be going. I've got to get

Kay back, you know. Even now, I'll have to light the lamps.”

“But--but we haven't seen Harry.”

A light woke in the golden woman's eyes. She was about to speak; the

Faun Man pressed his hand against her mouth. “You can see him to-morrow,

little girl, if Peter will bring you.”

“But where is he?”

The Faun Man swept the horizon. “Somewhere over there. He's gone away

into the wood with Canute, because we hurt his feelings.”

“But what's he doing?” Kay insisted.

The Faun Man looked at the golden woman; his eyes asked, “Shall we

tell?” They turned back to Kay. “What's he doing? Sitting with his head

in his hands. Crying, perhaps---- Do boys cry, Peter? He doesn't like

his brother and this little woman to be together. The poor old chap

doesn't think we do each other any good.”

“And do we?” The golden woman spoke softly.

The Faun Man became very solemn. His voice was husky. “We don't. But we

could.”

She twisted round in his embrace so that she met him breast to breast.

“Ah, there's the voice of every tragedy! We don't. But we could---- And

we know we could; and yet we don't.”

Down the garden, over the plank-bridge, across the meadow, through the

Haunted Wood they went together: the boy and girl, like lovers with arms

encircling; the man and woman, like brother and sister, holding hands,

brushing shoulders, and following. As they entered into Friday Lane, Kay

looked back. At the foot of a big oak Canute was lying, his nose between

his fore-paws, his eyes red-rimmed with vigilance.

She tugged on Peter's arm. “Why he must be up there. Oh, do let's be

nice to him. Just one minute. Let's.”

But when they approached, the dog's back bristled and he growled. He

lifted his black lip, showing the whiteness of his fangs. His sullen

eyes were on the golden woman. Like one embittered, who had ceased to

believe that virtue could be found anywhere, he regarded all four of

them in anger.

The Faun Man shrugged his shoulders. “When he climbs trees that means

he's getting better. There's no sense in worrying him; he won't come

down till he's ready.”

“Good-night,” Kay called to him with piping shrillness.

“Good-night,” called Peter.

And again, when the tree was growing small in the distance, Kay shouted,

“Good-night, Harry. We've missed you.”

From up in the clouds, very faint and little, came the sound of a

mouth-organ playing the wander-tune of romance:

“I've been ship-wrecked off Patagonia,

Home and Colonia

Antipodonia;

I've shot cannibals,

Funny-looking animals,

Top-knot coons.

I've bought diamonds...”

Their memories set the tune to words.

The old tandem trike was trundled out from its hiding place behind

the hedge. The Faun Man lifted Kay on to her seat at the back; Peter

mounted. All was ready.

“So you're riding away from fairyland,” sighed the golden woman.

“Foolish! Foolish! It's so easy to do that---- And when you've gone and

until you come again, there won't be any fairyland. It's so easy to ride

away; so difficult to come back.”

Kay thought that a doubt was being cast on Peter's cleverness. “It isn't

difficult at all,” she protested; “not if you have a tandem tricycle and

a big brother like Peter.”

The golden woman laughed with her hand against her throat. “But I

hav'n't a tandem tricycle, and I hav'n't a big brother like Peter.”

Kay knew she hadn't; she wondered what made the golden woman say that,

and---- yes, why she choked at the end of her words.

“Good-by till we come again.”

They rang their bells as a parting salutation. The wheels began to turn.

They disappeared between the hedges down the road, a vision of plunging

legs, bent backs and flying hair.

The man and woman were left alone on the highway between the Haunted

Wood and the town, to both of which these children had such ready

access.

Slowly, slowly the sun was vanishing; once a ball of fire; now the

boldness of sight on which an eye-lid was closing; at last a glory to be

taken on faith and conjecture. The country became vague as though seen

through water. Its greenness had a coolness which was more than color;

which had to be realized by a spiritual sense. The evening dimness, like

the hand of death, removed sharp temporary edges from the landscape and

revealed an expression which was timeless, which had been always there.

Birds had ceased calling. The moon floated out--the soul of the night,

high-lifted and inspired. Trees sought to touch her with their fingers;

she slipped by them, unhurried by their effort.

He had said so much to her in the past with his eager lips and words.

Now, for some time, he had been saying everything, while seeming to say

nothing.

He held her pressed against him. “Ah dearest----”

She stirred. “But I'm not good.”

“You are. But you're not kind to me often.”

“Not often,” she murmured.

He stooped; in the darkness he could say it--the old, old question

which, through repetition, had lost its generosity and splendor. “Am I

never going to make you love me?”

She turned her face away, so that his kiss fell on her neck. “I don't

know, don't know, Lorie? How should I? I don't want to hurt you. You

do believe me when I say that? But I'm fickle. I'm not at all what you

think me. I'm all wrong somewhere inside--cold and bad-hearted.”

He laid his cheek against hers, holding her more tightly. “Little Eve.

Please! You shan't accuse yourself. It wounds.”

She broke away, but only that she might return of herself. She caught

him by the lapels of his coat and tiptoed against him. “But I am.

Harry's quite right to hate me. I send you on long journeys, and you

can't forget me. I won't love you myself, and I keep you from loving

another woman. You offer me your soul, and I allow you to go thirsty. I

torture you, and give you nothing.”

He spoke very gently, for the first time honest. “I can put it in fewer

words: you want to be loved; you won't pay the price of loving. Isn't

that it?”

She pressed her golden head against his shoulder in ashamed assent.

Behind her shuttered eyes she had the vision of a long white road

leading up to a city, of a curly-headed boy and an elfin-girl steering

through the traffic beneath street lamps. She wanted to have the

palm without the dust, to be a mother without the sacrifice of having

children. Seeing the vision of children going from her, and knowing that

he would understand, she whispered, “One day I shall be old--and I shall

have missed all that.”

“Poor little Eve! Poor little girl!”

He picked her up in his arms and commenced to walk through the twilight,

across fields, to the cottage.

She raised her hand and touched his cheek. “You wonderful, strong Faun

Man.”

He halted in his stride and bent over her; then went on into the

shadows.