“Yes, he loves her—yes, he loves her,” so it seemed to say, over and over, again and again. Almost she could have torn it from her breast and flung it from her, had not it been sacred to her for the love of him with which it was filled. Think of it; try to imagine it. A woman fully developed, heart and body full of the South from bright head to nimble feet, as the South is full of beauty; free as the birds that cleaved her native air with strong, untiring wings; unlearned in all emotion whether of love or of hate; not weary in sense or perception; untutored, unknowing, uncivilized—and loving for the first time in all her one-and-twenty years of living!
There was no analysis here, no picking to pieces of little emotions, no skewering of butterfly passions to sheets of paper from the book of former knowledge. No comparison between then and now—between now and what might possibly have been had the bits of glass in the kaleidoscope of existence assumed a certain difference of juxtaposition. She loved him. Why she loved him, how she loved him, she could no more have told you than she could have told the names of the different elements which composed the tears with which her hot eyes brimmed.
It was seven o’clock of that same evening. Roden, restless and feverish, flung from side to side on an old leathern sofa in the library. There were no candles, but a great fire of chestnut-wood sought and found all such points as were capable of illumination in the sombre old room—the brass claw feet of the tables and chairs, the great brass hinges of the rosewood bookcase, the glass knobs on an old writing-desk in one corner, Roden’s eyes and hair as he lay listlessly resigned for a moment or two staring into the noisy labyrinths of the flames.
It was half an hour later. The leaping flames had settled as in sleep upon a bed of red-gold coals; a little ever-ascending spiral of gray-white smoke escaped from a cleft in the end of one of the half-burned logs. The old chimney-place was like a vivid picture set in the dark wall. Its yawning black throat, heavily clogged with soot, was tinged faintly for some way up by the glow from the lurid mass on the hearth. The great iron fire-dogs, at least four feet in height, were connected from shaft to shaft by a chain in grotesque suggestion of the Siamese twins. The much-burnt bricks had assumed opaline tones, in rosy grays and greenish-yellows, beneath the intense heat and light. On the hearth-rug the collie lay stretched, his ruffled legs every now and then executing an unavailing canter, as in his dreams perchance he chased a soaring buzzard.
They were all three asleep—the fire, the collie, Roden. A soft crooning wind, conducive to slumber, sighed at the doors and windows, vibrating every once in a while with sonorous minor cadences.
Suddenly the incessant monotone was snapped, as it were, to silence. The door leading into the library had been opened; some one entered cautiously, stood still; then the door was again closed noiselessly.
The person who had entered crept forward a pace or two. It was Virginia. She had not yet taken off her riding-habit, and the bandages were yet about her shoulder. Some dark stains here and there told where the blood had soaked through. As she came forward, nearer to the rich lambency of the fire, her white face borrowed some of its roseate flush, but the lines of pain, mental and physical, were traced as with a fine chisel about the sombre mouth and eyes. Stealing past the foot of the sofa on which Roden lay, she stood a moment looking at him. Her crossed wrists pressed each other hard against her bosom, her long fingers drawing the stuff of her habit in wrinkles with the tenseness of their grasp upon it. Her breast rose and fell, impatient, eager, behind the close prison of her arms, as some woodland thing so held might seek to be free. All at once she sank down to her knees upon the hearth-rug, lifting both hands to her bent face, and rocking herself to and fro with wild, swaying movements of her supple body. The collie raised his head with a drowsy curiosity, and let it fall heavily again upon the floor. The varying monody of the wind had begun again through the chinks in the closed door.
At last she lifted her head, letting her clasped hands fall loosely into her lap. A sudden flame showed her with an added vividness the face of Roden as he lay in tired unconsciousness upon the old lounge. She moved nearer to him, still on her knees; then again lifting her hands to her bosom, leaned forward and gazed upon him as though one should drink with the eyes. Her great braids, ruffled and half unplaited, followed the lithe curves of her back with glittering undulations, as of two mated golden serpents. So passed some moments.
Presently, as though uneasy, even in the far-off Land of Nod, beneath those moveless, hungry, beautiful eyes, the young man stirred, and muttered something in his sleep. Swift and noiseless as a cat she leaped backward into the folded shadows; but he did not wake. Once more she came forward. With a stealthy movement she drew out a little pair of scissors from the bosom of her dress; then bending over, lifted, with the touch of a butterfly upon a flower, one of Roden’s much-tossed curls. There was the sharp hiss of steel through hair, and the soft brown semicircle lay in the girl’s palm. She lifted it to her lips with the gesture of one who, half starved, suddenly finds bread within his grasp; then turning, she stole out again, even as she had entered.