within yourself. It was not my fault that you failed to know me when I spoke. Perhaps, even now, you would not have found me unless—in certain ways—through the children—you had begun to come into your own '
Paul interrupted her, taking her in his arms, while she made no effort to escape, but only laughed. 'And I'll take good care I never lose you again after this! 'he cried.
'You know, I wasn't really asleep just now on the sand,' she told him a little later. 'I heard you coming all the time; only I wanted to see if you would pass me by as you always did before.'
'It's very odd and very wonderful,' he said, 'but I never noticed you till to-day.'
'And very natural,' she added under her breath, so low that he did not hear.
And Paul, moving beside her, murmured in his beard, 'If she's not my Ideal, set mysteriously somehow into the framework of one I already love—I swear I don't know who she is!'
They made their way along the sandy shores of the river, the waves breaking at their feet, the wind singing among the reeds; never had the sunlight seemed so brilliant, the day so wonderful and kind. All nature helped them; playing their great game as if it was the only game worth playing in the whole world—the game loved from one eternity to another.
'So the children have told you about me, have they?' he whispered into the ear that came just level with his lips.
'And all you love, as well. Your dreams and thoughts more than anything else—especially your thoughts. You must be very careful with those; they mould me; they make me what I am. If you didn't think nicely of me—verynicelyindeed—'
'But I shall always think nicely, beautifully, of you,' he broke in eagerly, not noticing the familiar touch of language.
'You have so far, at any rate,' she replied, 'for the yearning and desire of your imagination have created me afresh.' And he discerned the smile upon her veiled face as one may see the sun only through troubled glass, yet know its warmth and brilliance.
'Then it is because you are part and parcel of my inner self that you seem so real and intimate and—true?' he asked passionately.
'Of course. I am in your very blood; I beat in your heart; I understand your every passion and emotion, because I am present at their birth. The most fleeting of your dreams finds its reflection in me; your spirit's faintest aspiration runs through me like a trumpet call; and, now that you have found me, we need never, we can never, separate!'
The passion of her words broke over his heart like a wave. He felt himself trembling.
'But it is all so swift and wonderful that it makes me almost afraid—afraid it cannot last,' he objected, knowing all the time that his words were but a common device to make his pleasure the more real.
'If only, oh, if only I could carry you away with
me into that outer world!'
She laughed deliciously in his face. 'It is from that very "outer world "that you have carried me-in here she told him softly, 'for I am always with you.' And with the words came that fugitive trick of voice and gesture that made him certain he knew her—then was gone again. 'In the house with your sister and the children,' she continued; 'when you write your Aventures and your verses; in your daily round of duties, small and great; and when you lie down at night—ah 'especially then—I curl up beside you in your heart, and fly with you through all your funny dreamland, and wake your dear eyes with a kiss so soft you never know it. In your early morning rambles, as in your reveries of the dusk, '. never leave you—because I cannot. All day long I am beside you, though you little realise my presence. I share half your pleasures and all your pains. And in return you hand over to me half that soul whose unuttered prayers have thus created me afresh for your salvation.'
'But it must be my own voice speaking,' he cried inwardly, satisfied and happy beyond belief. 'It is the words of my own thoughts that I hear!'
'Because I am your own thoughts speaking,' sh« replied instantly, as though he had uttered aloud. 'I lie, you see, behind your inmost thoughts!'
They walked through sunny meadows, picking their way among islands of wild flowers. There was no sound but the murmur of wind and river, and the singing of birds. Fleecy clouds, here and there in the blue, hung cool and white, watching them. The whole world, Paul felt, listened without shyness.
'And so it is that you love me without shyness,' she went on, marvellously linking in with his thought; 'I am intimate with you as your own soul, and our relations are pure with the purity that was before man. There can be no secrets between us, or possibility of secrets, for your most hidden dreams are also mine. So mingled with your ultimate being am I, in fact, that sometimes you dare not recognise me as separate, and all that appears on the surface of your dear mind must first filter through myself. Why!' she cried, with a sudden rush of mischievous laughter, 'I even know what you are made of; why your queer heart has never been able to satisfy itself—to "grow-up," as you call it; and all about this endless desire you have to find God, which is really nothing but the search to find your true inner Self.'
'Tell me! tell me!' he cried.
'Besides the sun,' she went on with a strange swiftness of words, 'there's the wind and the rain in you; yes, and moon and stars as well. That's why the fire and restlessness of the imagination for ever tear you. No mere form of expression can ever satisfy that, but only increase it; for it means your desire to know reality, to know beauty, to know your own soul; to know—God! Your blood has kinship with those tides that flow through all space, even to the gates of the stars; dawns and; sunsets, moonrise and meteors haunt your thoughts with their magic lights; wild flowers of the fields? and hillside nod beside you while you sleep; and the winds, laughing and sighing, lift your dreams? upon vast wings and flash with them beyond the edges of the universe!'
'Stop,' he cried with passion, 'you are telling all my secrets.'
'I am telling them only to myself,' she laughed, 'and therefore to you. For I know all the fevers of your soul. The wilderness calls you and the great woods. You are haunted by the faces of the world's forgotten places. Your imagination plays with the| lightning about the mountain tops, and seeks primeval forests and the shores of desolate seas. . . .'
Paul listened spellbound while she put some of the most intangible of his fancies into the language of poetry. Yet she spoke with the quiet simplicity of true things. The man felt his soul shake with delight to hear her. Again and again, while she spoke, the feeling came to him that in another moment her face must clear and he would know her; yet the actual second of recognition never appeared. The girl's true identity continued to evade him. The enticing uncertainty added enormously to her charm. It evoked in him even the sense of worship.
'And this shall be the earnest of our ideal companionship,' she whispered, holding up a spray of leaves which she proceeded to fasten into the buttonhole of his coat; 'the symbol by which you shall always know me—the sign of my presence in your heart.'
The top of her head, as she bent over the task, was on a level with his lips, and when he stooped to kiss it the perfumes of the earth—flowers, trees, wind, water—rose about her like a cloud. Her hair was hot with sunshine, all silken with the air of summer. They were one being, growing out of the earth that he loved—the old, magical, beautiful earth that fed so great a part of his secret life from perennial springs.
As she drew away again from his caress he glanced down and saw that what she had pinned into his coat was a little cluster of leaves from the branch of a silver birch tree.
'Then
