A Fountain Sealed

by Anne Douglas Sedgwick

In the midst of bewilderment and illumination one thing stood clear, a trembling joy; he had to make assurance doubly sure. "If you are not going away, what will you do?"

"I don't know";—he would, once, have rebuked the smile with which she said it as indolent;—"I wasn't thinking of anything definite, for myself. I'll watch other people do—you, for instance, Jack. I shall spend most of my time here in the country; New York is so expensive; I shall garden—wait till you see what I make of this in a few years' time; I shall look after Rose and Eddy—at a tactful distance."

"But your wider life? Your many friends, over there?" Jack still protested, fearing that he saw more clearly than she to what a widow with a tiny, crippled fortune was consigning herself in this country of the young and striving. "You need gaiety, brilliancy, big, bright vistas." It was strange to hear himself urging his thought for her against that inner throb. Again she gave him her grave, brief smile. "You forget, Jack, that I'm—cured. I'm quite old enough not to mind giving up."

The warm, consoling assurance was with him, of her presence near his life; but under it the excitement, the pain, had so risen that he wondered if she did not read them in his eyes.

The evening was growing late; the sky had turned to a pale, translucent gold, streaked, over the horizon, by thin, cold, lilac-colored clouds. He must go, leaving her there, alone, and, in so doing, he would leave something else behind him forever. For it was now, as the veil fell upon her, as the evening fell over the wide earth, it was now or never that he could receive the last illumination. He hardly saw clearly what that might be; it wavered like a hovering light behind the mist.

He rose and walked up and down the room a little; pausing to look from the windows at the golden sky; pausing to look, now and then, at her, sitting there in her long, black dress, vaguely shadowed on the outer light, smiling, tranquil, yet sad, so sad.

"So, our summer is at an end," he said, turning at last from the window. "The air has a frosty tang already. I suppose I must be off. I shall not see you again until New York. I'm glad—I'm glad that you are to be there"; and now he stammered suddenly, a little—"more glad than I can say."

"Thanks, Jack," she answered, her eyes fondly dwelling on him. "You are one of the things I would not like to leave."

Again he walked up and down, and seemed to hear the steady flow of that still, deep excitement. Why, above it, should he say silly, meaningless words, that were like a bridge thrown over it to lead him from her?

"I want to tell you one thing, just one, before I go," he said. He knew that, with his sudden resolution, his voice had changed and, to quiet himself, he stood before her and put both hands on the back of a chair that was between them. He couldn't go on building that bridge. He must dare something, even if something else he must not dare—unless, unless she let him. "I must tell you that you are the most enchanting person I have ever known."