A bird afloat,
Swims ’round the purple peaks remote.
So runs the poem, between the lines of which might be written the exultant, “Absent from the body!” Hester’s soul had the poet’s power of “drifting” into absolute idealization. She was used to building with dream stuff. In the time she had allotted, she lived out a lifetime, to tell of which would require hours and many pages. That she paid for the wide sweep into the remote and the never-to-be, by reaction bitterer than death, never dissuaded her from other voyages of the “winged boat.”
For perhaps sixty seconds Hetty, sitting upon the turf by the recumbent Thor, and idly pulling his shaggy hair, reflected regretfully upon this certain reflex action; then, as if uttered in her ear, recurred the words: “Where we four might paint, and talk, and live forever!”
“We four!” Involuntarily, her eye sped from one to another of the group; from May’s placid visage and smile upraised to the robin’s nest, to the face framed about by pale blue cushions—colorless as wax, the pain lines effaced by the sweet exaltation oftenest seen upon the forehead and mouth of a dead child—consciousness, rising into majesty, of having compassed all that is given to the human creature to know, the full possession of a happy secret to be shared with none who still bear the weight of mortality. Hetty’s heart slackened its beat while she gazed upon the motionless features. Her “child” was, for the time, rapt beyond her reach. Yet it was only “make believe” after all, that snared her into temporary bliss!
Before the pang of the thought got firm hold of her she met March Gilchrist’s eyes, full, and fixed upon hers.
He lay along the grass, supporting himself on his left elbow, his cheek upon his hand, the other hand, still holding the big brush, had fallen across Thor’s back. His eyes were startled, as by an unexpected revelation, and as her glance touched them, sudden, glad light leaped from depth to surface. He would not release her regard—not even when the glow that succeeded the numbness of the thrill stole from limb to limb, and suffused her face, and all the forceful maiden nature battled with the magnetic compulsion. The sough of the spring breeze in the flower-laden branches, likened by Hester to the whispering surf upon island sands; the humming bees and twittering birds; the sun-warmed scent of apple blooms and white clover and the sweetbrier growing just without the canopy of the king apple tree; the faint flush of light strained through locked masses of blossoms, were, for those supreme moments, all the world—except that this man—God’s most glorious creation—spoke to her, although his lips were moveless, and that the stir of a new and divine life within her heart replied.
“I am sure the time must be up!” said May yawningly. “Poor Hester is fast asleep, and my tongue aches with holding it so long.”
Hester unclosed her eyes slowly, smiled dreamily, and essayed no denial. March was on his knees, collecting brushes and tubes into his color box. Hetty was folding a rug so much too heavy for her wrists that May sprang to seize the other end.
“Why—are you chilly? Your fingers are like ice!” she exclaimed, as their hands met. “And how you shiver! I am afraid we have been selfish in keeping you out of doors so long!”