Even this they did not see more than in a secondary way, for the interposing thoughts and images.
The eyes of both were wide, and in their fixity the lights of heaven were glassed. The face of the one burned with a red spot on the visibly-defined cheek-bone; the cheeks of the other were, for a marvel, pale.
Aurora, uplifted on a great wonder and pride and illogical happiness, was thinking of the days to come, the immediate to-morrows, rich in a tenderness profounder still than that which had linked her before to the companion staring at the stars beside her; she thought of how she should through a wise firmness and God’s help steer their course into ways of a safer and longer happiness than that which he had tendered.
“It would seem rather unnecessary–” came from him through the transparent darkness in what was to the young driver’s ears a monotonous bar of insignificant sound, “it would seem to me almost imbecile, to say to you that I love you, when for months I have been hovering around you, as must have been evident to the dullest, like the care-burthened honey-fly, possessed with the fixed desire to hide his murmurs in the rose. When for months I have been, in fact, like a dog with his nose on your footprints, asking 406nothing but to lie down at your feet with his muzzle on your shoe.”
She impulsively felt for his hand, and pushed her own into it. “Don’t say another word, Gerald. I daresn’t do what you wish, I just daresn’t. I’m plain scared to! And I’m such a fool that I’m nearer to it this minute than I like to be by a long sight. I’m fond enough of you for almost anything, and you know it, but I must keep my level head. It can’t be done–a greyhound tied down to a mudturtle. I know what I’m like,–no disparagement meant, Mrs. Hawthorne,–and what you’re like, and I won’t let myself forget. I’m looking out first of all for myself, but I’m looking out for you, too, dear boy. Don’t say any more about it to-night, Gerald, please, with the stars shining like that, and the air so sweet that all the fairy-tales you ever heard seem possible. I want to keep solid earth under my feet.”
Gerald was not so devoid of the right masculine spark as not to recognize the moment for one of which advantage should be taken by any creature capable of growing a mustache. The thing to be done was to put his arms around her like a man, and lay his head on her shoulder like a child, and treat as not existing the barriers which she described as dividing them.
Often enough in his life Gerald had wished he might have been a masterful man, capable of the like things. But already a vague sickness of soul had succeeded his momentarily dominant mood. Distrust filled him–of his own character, his aims, his talent, his health, and his destiny. His dreams had but recently taken the form in which he had that day expressed them; he had not grown into them. Under the depressing effect of failure he was no more sure 407than she had professed to be that the proposed union would not be a rash mistake. He saw the wisdom of a return to his gray policy of wanting nothing, asking nothing. Heaviness possessed him; he made no motion.
Signs of the nearing city came thicker and thicker; the street lamps became frequent and consecutive. Aurora sat up and composed her appearance. The lighted house-fronts threw back the skies to inexpressible altitudes.
She continued aloud for Gerald to hear a conversation she had been holding mentally:
“Estelle says we must go away somewhere for the summer, because it’s awfully hot down here in Florence, we’re told. We’re thinking of taking some sort of place at the seashore for the bathing season. You’ll be coming down to visit us, won’t you? Then by and by, when I’ve had pretty near enough of the kind of life I’m leading, tell you what I’m thinking I’ll do. Give up the house I’ve got and take another, different, and fit it up for a children’s hospital, a small one, of course, to be within my means, and run it myself, and do what I can of the nursing. I’ve been thinking of it for some time as a good thing to do instead of spending my money and nothing to show for it. It would be something to do for the sake of little Dan, to make it so it wouldn’t be the same as if he never had passed through the world. Then I shall have my work just as you have yours, Gerald. And so we’ll live on, each so interested in all the other does. And you’ll come to see me, and I’ll go to see you–chaperoned, if you insist, though I understand a studio can be visited without impropriety, and–”