All the cheap sordidness of the city ended abruptly here. Beyond was space—a deep drop to the stretches of the James River below. Overhead was the infinite breadth and height of the sky, and far across the river, whose tawny waters were tufted by little islands, were green stretches of open country.
He drew her down to a bench. “This is the jumping-off place,” he told her. “I thought you could come here an’ kind of stretch and breathe when things got too close on you back there in the streets.”
It was amazing. The mean streets reached almost to them, fenced off by just that little edge of open ground, yet all one had to do was to turn the back upon them to enter another world, a place of space and freedom, of green islands, clean air, the smell of the water, and the yellow flow of it. Here, too, they found the secret places of their own souls. The twilight and then the dark came slowly down. They sat together upon the bench, their eyes rested by the open stretches before them, their hands close clasped, their bodies touching, and their soft, half-whispered words feeling out toward one another, as they brought to light all the past tragedies of their lives, all their sorrowful timidities. Here was one at last to whom everything might be told, who would listen, who would perfectly understand. They paused often to say in whispered wonder, “Why, I never told that to anyone before!”
He told her there in halting phrases about his marriage. His disjointed words only touched upon the high places, like a child skipping across a brook on the stepping-stones. All the difficult everyday intercourse with his wife that had followed their union was a dark flood he did not dip into. What he did tell was enough for her to understand.
“We lived in the same town together,” he said. “I’d known her always, off an’ on. She was mighty handsome—big and full of life. Everybody thought she was going to marry Warwick Preston. But I reckon they quarreled or something. Anyhow, him and Ethel Dow ran off and got married. She—Elizabeth—lived a few doors down the street from me. We met one evening—she was mighty fine an’ big-lookin’. She asked me to come an’ see her, an’ I went several evenin’s. One night she cried, an’ said how lonesome she was. I was lonesome, too—”
“I understand,” Julie cried hastily, and he went no further with his explanation. They turned away from the unhappy past to the miracle of the present.
“We’re free! We’re free!” she exulted. “None of the little old fears can hold us any more. We’ve found ourselves, honey! We’ve found one another.”
“It was you unlocked the door an’ set me free,” he burst out. “You’re my sister an’ my mother! You’re all I am. Oh, my little honey! My love!”
“I’m your sister an’ your mother—I’m the one that would die for you!” she cried in answer.
After that they needed no more words. Silence fell, and the dusk that had faded now into dark, wrapped them close about. They sat thus for a long time, but at last it was late, and rising they made their way hand in hand like happy children back to the three little rooms that were now their home.