The dusk came early and damply in the woods. They went back to the Inn, a little chilled, and Freda brushed her hair into neatness and went down to meet her husband in the dining-room. It was a strange and familiar feeling to see him standing by the door waiting for her. They were very hungry and talkative now. With the darkness outside, intimacy pressed closer upon them and they were shy of it, deliciously shy, enticing it closer to them by their evasion of it.
So after their dinner they sat in the little guest parlor of the Inn and watched each other, talking about irrelevancies until the whiz of a motor outside made Freda start.
“You know, Gregory, I’d sooner go upstairs. I know some of the people who sometimes come here. I’d rather not see them to-night.”
“Yes, darling.”
In their bed-room the muslin curtains were tugging at their sashes, trying to pull themselves free. A breeze of thick soft coolness came through the room. Freda felt as if her heart would burst with very wonder. Life to be known so deeply—so soon. And, as was strange and frequent with her she lost the sense of everything except Life, a strange mystery, a strange progress, of which she was an inevitable part, spreading about her, caressing her, absorbing her. She was not thinking of Gregory, until he came, knocking so absurdly, so humbly on the fragile door that her mind leapt into sudden pity, and personal love.
“You are like a white taper before the altar of love,” breathed Gregory.
Around them in the soft darkness the breeze played lightly. Beneath was the sound of dance music, of occasional laughter. They heard nothing to distress them in their complete isolation. Only when the music became tender, falling into the languorous delicacy of a waltz it added witchery to their rapture.
II
In the morning it was Gregory who was the practical one—Freda the mystic. Her mind was filled with mystery and dulled with the pervading sense of her husband. He was inconceivably more to her than he had been. She was infinitely rich with thought and revelation and too languorous to think. Gregory overwhelmed her. In his spirited tenderness, declaring her the miracle bride of the world, talking an unending poem of love to her, he was active now—she dreamy and spent. He brought her breakfast and sat beside her while she ate it. And suddenly it became clear to them that their time was slipping quickly by.
It had been the plan to return to the city that night but they found it impossible to leave each other.