Had she really meant him not to call to-day? Will she receive him coldly? Is it even possible to find her in such an absurd place as this, where positively everything seems mixed up together in such a hopeless fashion that one can't see farther than one's nose? Perhaps, after all, she is not here, has returned to the house, and is now——
Suddenly, across the bluebells, there comes to him a fresh sweet voice, that thrills him to his very heart. It is hers; and there, in the distance, he can see her, just where the sunlight falls athwart the swaying ferns.
She is sitting down, and is leaning forward, having taken her knees well into her embrace. Her broad hat is tilted backward, so that the sunny straggling hair upon her forehead can be plainly seen. Her gown is snow-white, with just a touch of black at the throat and wrists; a pretty frill of soft babyish lace caresses her throat.
Clear and happy, as though it were a free bird's her voice rises on the wind and reaches Branscombe, and moves him as no other voice ever had—or will ever again have—power to move him.
"There has fallen a splendid tear
From the passion-flower at the gate;
She is coming, my dove, my dear;
She is coming, my life, my fate."
The kind wind brings the tender passionate love-song to him, and repeats it in his ear as it hurries onward: "My dove, my dear." How exactly the words suit her! he says them over and over again to himself, almost losing the rest of the music which she is still breathing forth to the evening air.
"My life! my fate!" Is she his life,—his fate? The idea makes him tremble. Has he set his whole heart upon a woman who perhaps can never give him hers in return? The depth, the intensity of the passion with which he repeats the words of her song astonishes and perplexes him vaguely. Is she indeed his fate?
He is quite close to her now; and she, turning round to him her lovely flower-like face, starts perceptibly, and, springing to her feet, confronts him with a little frown, and a sudden deepening of color that spreads from chin to brow.
At this moment he knows the whole truth. Never has she appeared so desirable in his eyes. Life with her means happiness more than falls to the lot of most; life without her, an interminable blank.
"Love lights upon the hearts, and straight we feel
More worlds of wealth gleam in an upturned eye
Than in the rich heart or the miser sea."