The path ran not far from the Old Maid’s house, into the copse. It brought them upon the deserted end of an estate, where a small house could be seen deeply sheltered in the trees.
“That’s a nice place—sort of a wild garden.”
They settled themselves upon a log. The moon coming out from behind clouds broke only fitfully into these woodland depths. All around them was the soft still dusk, and a mysterious pensiveness in the night.
“I had to come,” Adams declared. “I wanted to see human beings, I wanted to talk to you. There’s an appetite of the spirit that has to be satisfied. I haven’t had any dinner, nor what you might call any lunch, but I don’t care. I’ve run amuck to get here. I couldn’t stand living with the lower man any longer. Doc’s gone, and there were just the ogre and myself!” He rested his elbows on his knees, and dropped his head heavily in his hands. “The men are sick and going down. The falling white man drops till there is nothing white about him but his skin! I won’t be that. I won’t go down with the rest! Oh, I’ve a right to live!
“I fled over the mountains, I would have gone through blood for this instant’s reunion with the decencies of my kind. To-night with my hat pulled over my eyes, I walked into the post when it was getting dark. I left my horse outside the village, and as I passed every house, I looked into it like a ghost. What a jolly little group! The Major was in his window, his iron old face turned to the hills, planning, I’ll bet, red-hot campaigns that would put his honor at rest. Good, decent old fellow, dressed in his stiff white. You ought to see how we go to dinner in Dao—or rather, you shouldn’t.
“There was old Bent, sewing on a button by the light of a lamp, and Dwight, a few feet away, reading a paper in a hammock, with Mike sitting on his head. Calmiden was out on the back gallery, with his feet wound round his tilted chair, staring at the sunset or the island, or something over there.
“Three of the fellows all together. I used to make the fourth. We used to play cards, and read our letters out loud.
“Little Mrs. Smith, farther on, was bending over a photograph in the dusk—that one of Marlborough taken in Cuba, I suppose. It made me wish I’d had a romance.
“You are about the only girl I ever thought about. But think how long it will be before I see you again! And then there are all these men here—”
Time passed unnoticed by the two sitting on the log amid the silvery lights and shadows, reviewing the experiences of youth and confiding to each other its ideals. Those hours were printed forever on Julie’s memory. Long afterwards she could recall Adams as he had sat with the moonlight playing about the shadow of his figure and his pondering gaze bent upon the encroaching darkness, and the way he had said, throwing out his arms, “Every time I stretch out my hand—it seems to come up against an invisible wall!”