Lewis turned his head and looked at her. The flush was back in her cheeks, her eyes were wide and staring far away, her moist lips were half open, and her bosom rose and fell in the long, halting swell of tremulous breath.
There is a beauty that transcends the fixed bounds of flesh, that leaps to the eye of love when all the world is blind. The flower that opens slowly, the face grown dear through half of life, needs no tenure in memory. It lives. Tears can not dim its beauty nor age destroy its grace, for the vision is part of him who sees.
The vision came to Lewis. His arms trembled to grip Natalie, to outrage her trust, and seize too lightly the promise of the years.
"Now, Nat?" he said hoarsely. He raised his hands slowly, took off her hat, and tossed it aside. Then with trembling fingers he let down her hair. It tumbled about her shoulders in a gold and copper glory of light and shade. Natalie did not stir. Lewis caught up a handful of her hair and held it against his cheek. "Now," he said, "I stay here. Since long before the day you said that you and I would sail together to the biggest island you've held my hand, and I've held yours. Sometimes I've forgotten, but—but I've never really let go. I'll not let go now. I'll cling to you, walk beside you, live with you, hand in hand, until the day you know me through and through.
"And then?" whispered Natalie.
"Then I'll love you," said Lewis, gravely. "For me you hold all the seven worlds of women. I've—I've been walking with my back to the light."
Natalie laughed—the soft laughter with which women choke back tears.
She put up her hands and drew Lewis's head against her breast.