“It's too wonderful—I can't realize that you exist, and that I have found you in such a great world. Isn't it strange how real dreams are; just now the real world seems the dream, and my dear home, my mother, shadows compared to the thoughts that fill my brain of you, you, you.
“But I am writing mostly to tell you something that, perhaps, you didn't fully understand yesterday—and yet I think you must have—that, if you really want me, I am absolutely your own. I couldn't help it if I wanted to, and, oh, I don't want to! I let a man at Etretat kiss me, and I am glad I did, for it made me understand that I must wait for you.
“I won't write any more now because my head aches. From Eliza who loves you utterly.” Then he saw that she had written on the following page: “Don't worry about money and the future; I have my own, all we shall need for years, and we can do something together.”
He laid the letter beside him on the grass. The welling song of a catbird sounded unsupportably sweet, and a peaceful column of smoke rose bluely from the chimney below: it carried him in imagination to a dwelling set in a still, green garden, where birds filled the branches with melody, and Eliza and himself walked hand in hand and kissed. Night would gather in about their joy, their windows would shine with the golden lamp of their seclusion, their voices mingle... sink... sacred.
He dreamed for a long while; the sunlight vanished from the slope below him, from the darkling trees, touched only the farthest hills with a rosy glow. As the sun sank an errant air whispered in the wheat, and scattered the pungent aroma of the wild strawberries. A voice called thinly from the swales, and cows gathered indistinctly about a gate. Anthony rose. The world was one vast harmony in which he struck the highest, happiest note. Beyond the near hills the lilac glitter of the Ellerton lights sprang palely up on the blue dusk. As he made his way home, Anthony's brain teemed with delightful projects, with anticipation, the thought of the house in the hollow—abode of love, steeped in night.
XVIII
ELLIE was in the garden, and interrupted his progress toward a belated dinner. “Father wants to see you,” she called; “at the Club, of course.” He wondered absently, approaching the Club, what his father wanted. The rooms occupied the second story of the edifice that housed the administration of the county; the main corridor was choked by a crowd that moved noisily toward an auditorium in the rear, but the Club was silent, save for the click of invisible billiard balls.
His father was asleep in the reading room, a newspaper spread upon his knees, and one thin hand twisted in his beard. Through an open window drifted the strains of a band on the Courthouse lawn. The older man woke, clearing his throat sharply. “Well, Anthony,” he nodded. Anthony found a chair.