Once again she felt the gypsy call of things beyond; once again she vibrated attune to the mystic song of the dark. She felt stifled in here with her love. For the moment she was even rebellious. After the sweep of sky-piercing summits, after the unmeasured miles of the sea, there was not room here for a heart so big as hers. Somehow this room seemed to shut out the sky. She wanted to go down into the crowd for a little and brush shoulders with these restless people. It would seem a little less as though she had been imprisoned.
It seemed to her as though she would then be more completely alone with him––alone as they were those first few hours when they had felt the press of the world against them. For this night of nights, she craved the isolation which had once been thrust upon them. They were such guarded creatures here. An hundred servants hedged them about,––hedged them in as zealously as jailers. The law––that old enemy––patroled the streets now to keep them safe where once it had thrust them out into the larger universe. Outside still lay the broad avenues of dark where one heard strange passings; where one was in touch with the ungoverned. The rain sifted gently from the uncharted regions above. It was there lovers 348 should be––there where one could swing the shoulders and breathe deeply.
The girl snuggled uneasily closer to his side. The two pressed to the window as though to get as far away as possible from all the man-made furnishings about them.
“Jo,” he whispered, “we oughtn’t to be shut in.”
She found his hand and grasped it with the strength of one who thrills with the deeper understanding. She trembled in the grip of that love which, at least once in a woman’s life, lifts her to a higher plane than can be reached outside a madhouse. She felt a majestic scorn of circumstance. She was one with Nature herself,––she and her man. She laid her hot cheek against his heart. She had not yet been kissed, withdrawing from his lips half afraid of the dizzy heights to which they beckoned.
“Let’s get back into the dark, Jo,” he whispered again, drawing her towards him; “back where I found you, Jo. I want to get outside once more––with you. I want to be all alone with you once more.”
“David! David!” she cried joyously, “I know.”
“I don’t want to start life with you from here. I want to start from where we stood before the fire all wet. It was there I found you.”
“Yes! Yes!” she answered, scarcely able to get her breath.
“It was meant for us to begin there. We were turned aside for a little into strange paths, but we’ll go back now. Shall we?”