“I wish it hadn’t come on us just now,” he said. “There’s no particular season that trouble adds a charm to; but it seems to me that it’s not entitled to the spring.”
When she went upstairs she did not go to bed. The moonlight lured her out into the night again. Outside her window there was a little balcony. It was only of painted wood, as the rest of the house was, but a multiflora rose had climbed over it and hung it with a wonderful drapery, and, as she stood upon it, she unconsciously made herself part of a picture almost strange in its dramatic quality.
She looked out over the sleeping land to the mountains standing guard.
“Where should we go?” she said. “The world is on the other side.”
She was not in the mood to observe sound, or she would have heard the clear stroke of a horse’s hoofs on the road. She did not even hear the opening of the garden gate. She was lost in the silver beauty of the night, and a vague dreaming which had fallen upon her. On the other side of the purple of the mountains was the world. It had always been there and she had always been here. Presently she found herself sighing aloud, though she could not have told why.
“Ah!” she said as softly as young Juliet. “Ah, me!”
As she could not have told why she sighed, so there was no explanation of the fact that, having done so, she looked downward to the garden path, as if something had drawn her eyes there. It is possible that some attraction had so drawn them, for she found herself looking into a young, upturned face—the dark, rather beautiful face of a youth who stood and looked upward as if he had stopped involuntarily at sight of her.
She drew back with a little start and then bent her Narcissus-crowned head forward.
“Who—who is it?” she exclaimed.
He started himself at the sound of her voice. She had indeed looked scarcely a real creature a few moments ago. He took off his hat and answered: