“Oh, Sylvia!” and he added: “The
life is not yet saved!”
“Perhaps I am given to the summer,” she
answered, and then, with a whimsical change of humor,
she laughed tenderly. “Oh, but I wish I
wasn’t. You will write? Letters will
come from you.”
“As often as possible, my dear. But they
won’t come often.”
“Let them be long, then,” she whispered,
“very long,” and she leaned her head against
his shoulder.
“Lie close, my dear,” said he. “Lie
close!”
For a while longer they talked in low voices to one
another, the words which lovers know and keep fragrant
in their memories. The night, warm and clear,
drew on toward morning, and the passage of the hours
was unremarked. For both of them there was a
glory upon the moonlit land and sea which made of
it a new world. And into this new world both walked
for the first time—walked in their youth
and hand in hand. Each for the first time knew
the double pride of loving and being loved. In
spite of their troubles they were not to be pitied,
and they knew it. The gray morning light flooded
the sky and turned the moon into a pale white disk.
“Lie close, my dear,” said he. “It
is not time.”
In the trees in the garden below the blackbirds began
to bustle amongst the leaves, and all at once their
clear, sweet music thrilled upward to the lovers in
the hollow of the down.
“Lie close, my dear,” he repeated.
They watched the sun leap into the heavens and flash
down the Channel in golden light.
“The night has gone,” said Chayne.
“Nothing can take it from us while we live,”
answered Sylvia, very softly. She raised herself
from her couch of leaves.
Then from one of the cottages in the tiny village
a blue coil of smoke rose into the air.
“It is time,” said Chayne, and they rose
and hand in hand walked down the slope of the hill
to the house. Sylvia unlatched the door noiselessly
and went in. Chayne stepped in after her; and
in the silent hall they took farewell of one another.
“Good-by, my dear,” she whispered, with
the tears in her eyes and in her voice, and she clung
to him a little and so let him go. She held the
door ajar until the sound of his footsteps had died
away—and after that. For she fancied
that she heard them still, since, she so deeply wished
to hear them. Then with a breaking heart she
went up the stairs to her room.
CHAYNE COMES TO CONCLUSIONS
“Six weeks ago I said good-by to the French
Commission on the borders of a great lake in Africa.
A month ago I was still walking to the rail head through
the tangle of a forest’s undergrowth,”
said Chayne, and he looked about the little restaurant
in King Street, St. James’, as though to make
sure that the words he spoke were true. The bright
lights, the red benches against the walls, the women
in their delicate gowns of lace, and the jingle of
harness in the streets without, made their appeal to
one who for the best part of a year had lived within
the dark walls of a forest. June had come round
again, and Sylvia sat at his side.
