Perhaps love had turned Hugh clairvoyant. Perhaps acute happiness does that sometimes. But whatever the cause of the illumination of his sympathy, he realized Glenn and Anne as noble, beautiful. And for one flashing instant he saw, typified in them, the pain of Youth itself.
He did no more about the key, but turned back to the car, awed and quieted. He did not understand precisely what had happened to him by this quickening in his soul of the power of insight. And above all he was not conscious of any concrete reason there might be in those two particular lives for his compassion. All that he knew definitely was that he had looked with naked eyes on the fortitude of youth.... He himself had never been so clear-cut as were Anne and Glenn. He had hoped and pretended his youth away. Glenn and Anne would go on dancing through their youth, dancing over its pains and anguishes, wand-held, reserved, with intricate steps.... Their eyes open.... Perfectly self-conscious.... But dancing still—with all the discipline of a patterned art.
The minute he was in the car beside Ariel he forgot them. The big house and all it held was blotted out in shadow at their backs, and their path cut itself ahead through moonlight. But neither spoke. Ariel sat well over at her own side of the wide seat. Hugh watched the road and guided the wheel. As they neared their avenue it never entered Hugh’s head to suggest, “Let’s go on, up the river.” Although the road was a wide path of sheer moonlight, and the silvered river raced at their shoulders like an Angel of Lovers. For he knew that Ariel’s heart held one intention—to get to Grandam. From the minute when, at dinner, Schwankovsky had drawn attention to her ring (except for the swift bright period of the dance), this had been true. So he raced the roadster in under the dark arch and up the moon-laced wood road through the glimmering birches and beeches, around the silvery-dark curves to the door. There he spoke the first words that had been uttered since they were alone together:
“I won’t drive the car around yet, but go up to see Grandam with you, Ariel.”
As they ascended the steps,—the three, shallow, wide steps to Wild Acres’ home-promising door,—Hugh was shy of Ariel. He longed that she should turn her face, look at him, speak to him. But Ariel was afraid of Hugh. She had said too much. She had said everything there ever would be to say, with her eyes, when she looked up from those heads of the dark dream-children, and found his dark eyes—so like, so terribly like—on hers.
Besides, here was the aquamarine on her finger, clear in the moonlight. And before she gave herself to Hugh, Grandam, her beloved friend, was to die. Things must come in their order. If she raised a hand, if she breathed too deeply, something might be shaken out of God’s beautiful intended order for it. All life—and birth and death—was so delicately balanced, it seemed, here, in one girl’s heart!
Hugh had his latchkey in the lock. But the door was not opening. Surprised at that, Ariel did turn and look up at him.
She stepped back—suddenly—away from what she saw. But he followed and took her into his arms. She leaned back against his arms, held herself back and away from his body, but her face remained lifted to his. By moonlight he saw that it was as expressionless as when she had danced, expressionless as the face of a flower is expressionless—to mortal eyes—and strangely silver, bent back this way against his dark coat sleeve. But although she was leaning back and away from him, he felt no weight on his arm. Her body was held with the dancer’s self-sustaining poise. Then he knew what he had only believed before: she was the eternal dancer, but not to music. Hers was the dance to life. His beloved’s whole genius was for living.
Gently, he drew the poised, free body toward him. There was no blindness of engulfing passion here, only two wills, free as day, rushing fleetly upon one another. No red flames roared against a dark mind-misery. Only sunrise breaking about the whole circle of his soul’s horizon. Heaven’s dawn.
Grandam saw their faces and bodies radiant with that dawn when they came into her room.