Royce’s scheme was complete. All the Cove and the mountain regarded him as a dangler after Euphemia Sims. He could feign a hopeless jealousy. He could hold aloof for a time, and the old status would doubtless readjust itself with the ease and security imparted by habit. He had gone as far as he had ever planned. Now he could leave the rest to chance.
But if the life here had afforded so arid a prospect heretofore, how could he contemplate it without Euphemia? His very speech no other creature could understand. He felt that he would be as isolated as if he were on a desert island, and he had a fiery impatience of time,—the years that were coming seemed such long years. He had never been more in earnest in his life, as he looked down into her beautiful illumined face.
“But you will not, Euphemia,” he said, slipping his arm around her waist. “You don’t love him.”
Beyond a start, half surprise and half coyness, she had not moved.
“Tell me—you care nothing for him?”
“Not now,” she faltered. And she felt anew a pang for her lack of constancy.
He revolted at the partial admission with all a lover’s insistence on preëminence. “Never—never! You couldn’t care for such a fool. And he doesn’t love you, or he would have given up that folly at once—or anything you wished.”
Even now he hesitated. The breeze swayed the branches above them, and all the draping pendent wild grapevines that clung about the tree were suddenly astir. The circle of dark shadow in which they stood was inlaid with silver glintings as the moonlight struck through the foliage; the soft radiance fell full in her eyes.
“I would give up all the world for you,” he cried impulsively, “because I love you!”
She drew back a trifle, and looked over her shoulder into the glittering idealization of the familiar scenes of her life in the glamours of the moonlight and of love. She heard the low dryadic song of the leaves; she heard the beating of her own heart.