“My little honey, it’s all right,” he whispered, his arm tightening round her. “It’s all right. I’m glad you said ‘Hart’s Run.’ I wouldn’t have had you not to. Don’t get scared.”
They were all alone on the lower terrace of the park. At their back rose a steep bank. In front was the sheer drop to the river, overhung by the wide soft spaces of the misty air. Their hands met in a tight clasp, and for a moment they were silent in the ecstasy of their complete trust in each other. But after a moment she spoke diffidently.
“Tim, I got a notion about our—our happiness.” They never spoke of it as love. “I want to tell you about it.” She had fallen into a little trick of saying eagerly, “I want to tell you,” or “I want to tell you all about it.” And always he answered, “Tell me, my little honey.”
Since her mother’s death there had never been any one who had really wanted to hear what she had to say, and even her mother had not wanted it, had not understood, in the complete way that he did. Now, because of his understanding, her thoughts poured themselves out in a manner that astonished her. His creative sympathy made ideals and fancies, which heretofore had been too deep or too elusive to be expressed, come forth fleshed in words.
“Tell me, my honey,” he said now.
“Well, our happiness, Tim—it’s so—so alive, that it seems like it was a real thing running through us, like the way sap runs up the trees in spring. Oh, honey, ’til you came I was as dead as a winter branch, an’ now it seems like I couldn’t hold all the happiness, all the life that’s mine. I got to pour it out for other folks.”
“What’s folks ever done for you, or for me, that you got to please ’em now?” he said unexpectedly.
She was startled, frightened by his quotation of her own words. “Oh, I don’t feel that way now,” she cried. “I don’t feel it now that we got each other, do you? Do you, Tim?” she questioned anxiously, trying to read his face in the dusk.
“No, I don’t now—now that we’re free,” he answered. “I know something,” he announced suddenly.
“What? What do you know?”