And he essayed to lay hold of her, his blood on fire, for the moment, with frustrated pride, the agony of relinquishment, and passion baulked.
"And I love you too," she answered fearlessly, "so greatly, so absorbingly, that I have broken all bonds of time and space, and defied all laws of life and death, to find you, and behold you, and speak with you again—"
Yet even as she made this declaration, she slipped away from his urgent embrace, even as a rosy snow-wreath slips from the cliff edge, when the sun climbs high in heaven, drawing back to itself, by the power of its strength and heat, snow and vapours, dews and fair, dissolving mists, such as cling at dawn along the water-courses and haunt the quiet underspaces of the woods. There were tears in her sweet eyes, and that airy frame of hers was shaken by sobs; yet her face very brave and of a marvellous brightness.
"Go back to the world, dear love," she said, "and play your part in the great game finely to the close. Let no shame touch you, or breath of dishonour smirch any page of your record. I will go back too—yet rather go forward—reaching a fairer world than yours, a world which in my folly I disdained, being blinded by the things of sense. There I shall await your coming; and we shall be one at last, being one with Almighty and Eternal God."
She passed from the room; but, though Laurence followed her swiftly, he found the corridor empty. The yellow drawing-room, when he entered it, was vacant too, though retaining its gracious and friendly aspect. A cool wind blew through it, laden with the scent of the rose borders of the Italian garden. The storm was over, and the night sky was clear and very full of stars.
XXIV
Quite a number of people had come to luncheon. Quite a number still remained, though it was past four o'clock, upon the great, deep-eaved verandah, in attendance on Virginia. There was a babel of clear, penetrating voices, occasionally an outbreak of laughter, though, in point of fact, notwithstanding its ready verbal wit, the New World is less addicted to laughter than the Old. Laurence had listened, had put in a lazy sentence here and there; but now the entertainment began to pall on him slightly. It was too continuous. They were all so young, so emphatic, so tireless in the business of pleasure, these bright, clear-cut, young people. He remembered it was mail day. The English letters and newspapers should have arrived by now. He got up and sauntered, cigarette in mouth, into the great, pale living-room. The Venetian shutters were closed, and the room, with its spare though elegant furniture, and butter-coloured, parquet floor, was full of a clear, green light, quiet, and excellently cool. Sure enough, on one of the tables lay, in goodly array, lately arrived letters and papers. Laurence began opening these in desultory fashion. The glass doors, standing wide on to the verandah, framed Virginia's perfectly finished person lying back in a rocking-chair. Her profile was outlined against a soft, sea-green cushion. She was talking, others were listening, as was usually the case in respect of Virginia. Beyond the hand-rail and uprights of the verandah, could be seen a long sweep of rather coarse grass, and the waters of the river, white in the brilliant, afternoon light, whereon lay some trim rowing-boats and smart pleasure-yachts at anchor. The water was absolutely still, even and gleaming as the surface of a silver mirror; yet it lapped with a just audible gurgle and suck against the indentations of the low, green banks. And this cool, liquid sound formed an agreeable undertone to those clear, penetrating voices, the ceaseless chirrup of crickets and strident fiddlings of countless grasshoppers.
Behind the ample, wide-ranging, wooden house—spotless in its purity of white paint, dignified by its ranges of dark-green, slatted shutters, its grey-brown, shingled roofs, and many gables—a certain puritan simplicity pervading it, somewhat quaintly at variance with its highly-developed appliances of modern comfort, and the almost surprisingly civilised examples of modern humanity now domiciled within it—behind it the ground trended upward, through pleasant orchards of apple, pear, and peach trees, past commodious wooden barns and stables, long, grey snake-fences, and corn patches, where the pumpkins began to grow golden beneath the wide, glistening leaves, the giant cobs and silken tassels of the maize. Down to meet this spacious foreground unencumbered by superfluous detail, wandered the sparse, untamed, ubiquitous woodland of the New England States. Everywhere slender, long-limbed trees, endless scrub, festooning vines, heavy with bunches of little fox-grapes, and below outcroppings of grey rock. Some two months hence, the edge of the woodland would be fringed by spires of golden-rod and processions of purple asters, while the maples set forth an amazement of verdigris green, lemon-colour, and all manner of radiant pinks and scarlets, and sumach dyed the hollows blood-red; but as yet the woods retained their summer tints. There was a slight want of atmosphere no doubt. The landscape was oddly lacking in values of distance; while the sky was blue to the point of crudity, and the sun blazed, had blazed, would blaze, with a youthful and tireless energy—not unsuggestive of the conversation of Virginia and all those friends of hers—throughout the unshadowed and unmitigated day.
To right and left were other hospitable mansions, the limits of their private grounds unmarked by jealous wall or paling. A wide-ranging spirit of good-nature and confidence appeared to reign; yet, in point of fact, the inhabitants of these agreeable country houses formed a distinctly close corporation. The Van Reenan property had been broken up into building lots on the death of its first owner, old Erasmus Van Reenan, merchant and financier of New York, nearly seventy years ago. But the said lots had been acquired by members of his numerous family; and still Van Reenans, direct and collateral, their children and their children's children, found relaxation at times in this amiable, American Capua. But woe to any intruder from the outer world, unless furnished with irreproachable passport and the very highest of high-class references, who should venture to set sacrilegious foot on this thrice sacred ground! For, as Laurence had frequently reflected—not without a measure of amusement—nothing is so essentially aristocratic as a democratic country, nothing so socially exclusive as an immature civilisation.