She turned slowly toward him and lifted her downcast face, alight with all the glow that was in her heart. “Jeff,” and the word as it came from her tenderly smiling lips was a caress, “Jeff, I love you so much that my heart has made me forgive you even that you allowed Mary Ellen—Lear White—to be sold.”
“My sweet! And I love you so much that my heart has made me forgive even your stealing her away!”
For a moment it seemed to them that gray eyes and brown melted into each other. And then the comedy of their cross-conscienced hearts struck her sense of humor, the corners of her mouth trembled and deepened and a smile flashed over her face and sparkled in her eyes. At that they both laughed, softly, in the tenderness of perfect understanding. Then she saw the old baffled, determined look overspread his face as turning sharply he strode across the room and back.
“My God, Rhoda! Why have our hearts snared us into this misery? Why don’t you loathe me as you do all that I believe in and stand for? Why can’t I condemn and scorn you as I do all the rest of your tribe? Why must I, when I detest and am injured by what is dearest to you, still see in you my ideal of all that is lovable and womanly? My love, my love, why can’t I hate you instead of loving you so that you are the only woman in all the world I want for my wife? Must our love be forever a curse instead of a blessing?”
He flung himself into a chair beside the table, every muscle of his body expressive of anger and rebellion at the mysterious forces of human life that had played this scurvy trick upon them, pitted against each other loving heart and steadfast conscience and left them, like two cocks in a pit, to fight it out in a struggle to the death.
Did they laugh at him and at her, those Caliban spirits of the universe, that with grim and cruel humor are forever setting human purpose awry and sending it, lop-sided and ludicrous, far aside its mark? Did they laugh and cheer and find pleasure in that struggle, the sure result of the innate upward-strivingness of the human soul, like human beings around a cock-pit betting upon which instinct, which spirit, which physique, shall prove the stronger? Or, perhaps, was Caliban pushed aside by some Angel of the Sword, infinitely just and infinitely merciful, that with stern lips whispered to pitying eyes, “No, let them struggle, for only by struggling, even to the uttermost, can their souls grow!”
Softly Rhoda came near, hesitatingly put forth one hand and let it rest for an instant upon his arm. At her touch he straightened up and unconsciously one hand sought the place upon his arm where hers had lain. “I don’t believe, dear, it will be forever. I don’t believe it will be very much longer.”
“What do you mean, Rhoda?” he cried, springing up. “Do you really think there is hope for us?”
“Yes, Jeff, I do. But I don’t suppose you’ll see it as I do. It’s only that I think,” she was speaking timidly, and yet with a grave eagerness of voice and manner, “and so do a good many of us, that slavery can’t last much longer. We feel sure that its end is bound to come, in one way or another, and that before long. And when slavery is swept away, Jeff, and the whole country is clean of it, then there will be no gulf between us!”
Her serious eyes were luminous as they met his unbelieving ones and in her face was the subdued glow of one who looks afar off upon a land of promise and knows that toward it his feet are set. Love and disbelief were mingled in the somber countenance he bent upon her.