She smiled down at him with delighted triumph, and drawing a chair close beside the bed, seated herself and placed her soft hand on his where it lay on the coverlid.
“You are much better, this morning,” she said cheerily. “You will soon be all right, now.” And as she looked into the eyes that regarded hers so questioningly, there was in her face and manner no hint of doubt, or pretense, or reproach;—only confidence and love.
He spoke slowly, as if feeling for words: “I have been in Hell; and you—you have brought me out. Why did you do it?”
“Because you are mine,” she answered, with her low chuckling laugh. It was so good to have him able to talk to her rationally after those long hours of fighting.
“Because I am yours?” he repeated, puzzling over her words.
“Yes,” she returned, with a hint of determined proprietorship in her voice; “because you belong to me. You see, that eddy where your boat landed is my property, and so anything that drifts down the river and lodges there belongs to me. Whatever the river brings to me, is mine. The river brought you, and so—” She finished with another laugh,—a laugh that was filled with tender mother-yearning.
The blue eyes smiled back at her for a moment; then she saw them darken with painful memories.
“Oh, yes; the river,” he said. “I wanted the river to do something for me, and—and it did something quite different from what I wanted.”
“Of course,” she returned, eagerly, “the river is always like that. It always does the thing you don't expect it to do. Just like life itself. Don't you see? It begins somewhere away off at some little spring, and just keeps going and going and going; and thousands and thousands of other springs, scattered all over the country, start streams and creeks and branches that run into it, and make it bigger and bigger, as it winds and curves and twists along, until it finally reaches the great sea, where its waters are united with all the waters from all the rivers in all the world. And in all of its many, many miles, from that first tiny spring to the sea, there are not two feet of it exactly alike. In all the centuries of its being, there are never two hours alike. An infinite variety of days and nights—an infinite variety of skies and light and clouds and daybreaks and sunsets—an infinite number and variety of currents and shoals and deep places and quiet spots and dangerous rapids and eddies—and, along its banks, an endless change of hills and mountains and flats and forests and meadows and farms and cities—and—” She paused, breathless. And then, when he did not speak, but only watched her, she continued: “Don't you see? Of course, the river never could be what you expect, any more than life could be exactly what you want and dream it will be.”
“Who in the world are you?” he asked, wonderingly. “And what in the world are you doing here in the backwoods?”