Much more talk ensued. The girls came to the
conclusion that, for the present, they must do nothing
that might let the secret out of their keeping.
They must wait and watch: when the right thing
grew plain, they would do it!
BARBARA THINKS.
Barbara rode home with strange things in her mind.
Here was a romance brought to her very door!
She was nowise hungry after romance, being of the
essence of romance her own lovely self, in the simplicity
which carried her direct to the heart of things.
She was life in such relation to life, that her very
existence was natural romance. How should there
be any romance to equal that of pure being, of existence
regarded and encountered face to face, of the voyage
forth from the heart of life, and the toilsome journey,
peril-beset, back to the home of that same heart of
hearts! Here was one wrapt in a strange cloud:
why should she not pass through the cloud, and join
her fellow-traveller within?
Naturally then, from this time, the thoughts of Barbara
rested not a little upon the person and undeveloped
history of the man with whose being she was before
linked by a greater indebtedness than any but herself
could understand. Any enlargement of relation
to the unseen world—the world, I mean,
of thought and reality, region of recognizable relation,
or force—is an immeasurably more precious
gift than any costliest thing that a mortal may call
his own until death, but must then pass on to another;
and Richard had thrown open to Barbara the wealthiest
regions of the literature of her race! She, on
her part, had so much influenced him, that he had
at least become far less overbearing in the presentment
of his unbelief. For Barbara’s idea, call
it, if you will, her imagination of a God, was one
with which none of those things for the hate’s
sake of which he had become the champion of a negation,
held fellowship; and he carried himself toward it
with so much courtesy that she had begun to hope he
was slowly following her out of the desert places,
where, little as she yet knew about God, she felt life
impossible. The strongest bonds were thus in process
of binding them; and Barbara’s feeling toward
Richard might very naturally develop into one or other
of the million forms to which we give the common name
of love.
As for Richard, he was already aware that his feeling
toward Barbara could be no other than love; but he
knew love as only the few know it who give
themselves, who cherish no hope, look for no response,
dream of no claim. To expect any return of his
devotion would have seemed to Richard the simplest
absurdity. He did not even say to himself that
the thing could not be. Not therefore, however,
was he to escape suffering; the seeds of it were already
sown in him plentifully, though its first leaves are
not to be distinguished from those of other plants,
and it sometimes takes long for the flower to appear.
