“I know. I'm a poor, tongue-tied lover, Milly. I ought to fling myself loose on the subject, and describe the gorgeous state of my heart, and lie like a seaman ashore, if I had the gift of my calling. I'm no poet or dreamer of dreams. I'm after realities. I don't expect to be a burning and shining light to other people or reform anybody whatever, but I expect to please one girl, if she'll let me try. Real things! What do you suppose they are? One time I was born, and now I love you, and sometime I'll die, and God knows what then. Are those realities? Can you see the river there, where the moonlight is on it? It runs down to the lake, and the force that draws it down is as real as the river itself. Love is a real thing, more real than hands and feet. It pulls like gravitation and drives like steam. When you came to me there at the Hall, what was it brought you? An instinct? You asked me to take care of you. I had an instinct that was what I was made for. I thought it was all safe then, and I felt like the eleventh commandment and loved mine enemy for a brother. I can't do anything without you! I've staked my hopes on you, so far as I can see them. I've come to the end of my rope, and there's something between us yet, but you must cross it. I can't cross it.”
From where Hennion sat he could look past the porch pillar, to the spot at the street corner directly under the electric light. The street was deserted except for some solitary walker, pacing the sidewalk slowly past the house, and hidden from Hennion by the porch vines. Now he had turned and was coming back again slowly to the corner, and now Hennion glanced out beyond the pillar and saw Aidee standing under the electric light. Then Aidee was again hidden by the porch vines, and again his slow footsteps passed on the sidewalk some hundreds of feet from the porch.
“Can I cross it?” Camilla's voice sounded older, not buoyant, but tired and humble, and sinking lower and lower as she went on. “Can I? If love were the same as faith! There's no one else I can believe in, in this way, as I do in you, dear. I'm so sure, but I thought—but can I come? If you tell me truly that I can come—I will believe what you tell me.”
Hennion wondered if Aidee had come to take his last look at the house, or were debating in his mind whether or not he should enter. He turned on Camilla, and thrust his arm beneath her, and drew her to him sharply. He expected a remonstrance, but none came; only a small sigh whose meaning was as imponderable as the scent of the little white flowers that grew on the porch vines; and her hand lay still on one of his shoulders, and her head with its thick hair on the other.
“You have come!” he said.
Another small sigh, a moment's weighing of the statement.
“Yes. I have.”
Aidee passed under the electric light once more, and looked his last on the Champney windows, unnoticed now from the Champney porch, unaware that there was anyone to notice him in the shadow of the deep porch vines, with their small white glimmering blossoms. He quickened his pace and went his way up Bank Street.