CHAPTER III
We Had to go back to the subject of course, it couldn't be left hanging in the air like that. It was a day or two later at Hampton Court, where we had gone for no reason really, except that it seemed a more commensurate background for what was going on in us, the identification in each by the other, of the springs of immortal passion. We had roved through all the rooms, recharged for us with the exceptional experience, and come out at last on the river bank where there was quite a holiday air among the houseboats.
Behind us we could hear the soft slither of the fountain in the sunk garden; the warm sun streaming on us through the filmy air, the flutter of curtains in the houseboats above the little pots of geraniums, the voices of young people laughing and calling across, began to steal across my mind with a sense of the extraordinary richness of life. Here was all the stuff of which I had built up my earliest dreams of the Shining Destiny ... young people growing up about me ... room to stretch my capacity to the uttermost ... the orderly social procedure. For the moment I believed that I might turn back on that path my feet had failed in, and find in it all that I had missed. I recalled that there were always children in my dream. For the instant they were back ... little heads and faces ... all the eyes on me ... soft curls, like wisps of gossamer. I suppose there must be such little unclaimed souls forever hovering and flitting, little winged things, to love's mighty candle. What should there be in the touch of a man's hand on a woman's that they should come crowding to it like homing doves?
There was a maid going by with her charge, one of those glowing fair-haired English children who supply us with the images by which we prefigure the angelic choirs. Helmeth held out his hand to the boy, and with that swift spark that passes between the young and those by whom they are beloved, he toddled forward and laid hold of the inviting finger.
If I had had more experience of the pang that shot through me then, I should have known it for jealousy. It drove me on toward what, until now, I had avoided.
"Tell me about your girls, Helmeth." He felt in the pocket of his coat.
"If you would care to see them——" He was so pleased and shy, I suppose he must have understood better than I how it was with me. "They are with an aunt in Los Angeles; it was handier for me to see them when I ran up from Mexico. They are rather decent kiddies. You'll see them when they come to New York this winter."
"Shall you be in New York?" It struck coldly on me that he should speak of plans that seemed to be going on regardless of the extraordinary interruption of our love.
"Until I get this Mexican scheme on its feet I shall be going back and forth."
"They look like their mother," I suggested. I was looking still at the small, rather pale photographs he had handed me.