"Won't you find her? I should like to see her."
Nonplussed, he lifted himself from the sand. After staring about, he struck off in search of his wife. But when Annie appeared by his side, wrinkling up her face in the sunlight and holding out her hand, Rachel had little to say. Immediately afterward she left them.
A few days later as she was crossing the lawn, Rachel met Emil and he accosted her. This time there was umbrage in his tone.
"I say," he cried, and he placed himself directly in her path, "why don't you ever come over and let me show you that organ attachment? I can play for you now, in a sort of way; in fact I'm quite a musician."
Again she avoided his look and attempted to put him off. "I have promised to drive over to the station this afternoon and meet Mr. Hart," she said, "but I will come—sometime."
"But when?" he demanded, scowling at her, and his countenance was no longer good natured but fierce and aggressive. "You used to show some interest in my work, but now you withdraw it all of a sudden—just like a woman. And I tell you, I can't finish the thing without it," he concluded angrily. "I can't go on alone—you've accustomed me to something else."
A shiver ran through her like that which takes a young bird that feels the air for the first time beneath its tentatively fluttering wings. Her impulse was to sail away in the atmosphere of love his crude unconscious confession breathed about her. She dared not raise her eyes because of the involuntary joy that filled them.
"I'll come over this evening with Simon," she said, softly. And everything about himself and about herself she loved passionately.
Life, by all of us, is felt vaguely to be a tapestry of which we see the under side. But now in a flash Rachel saw the pattern that Fate was weaving imperturbably; a pattern premeditated from the beginning; and well she knew that nothing she could do or he could do, could stay that weaving hand. Though no word of love was ever spoken, the design in all its beauty was complete, for words and acts are human lumber, unessential to the accomplishment of the spiritual miracle; present, they follow the design inaccurately; absent, the design is seen the clearer because of no gross accompaniment. And Rachel wondered if Emil saw at last what she saw; if he did not now, he would see,—he would! And neither was any more responsible for the fact that filled the world with new meaning than he was responsible for the fact of life. From these meditations she roused herself, emerging as from an enchanted mist.
"I'll come over this evening with Simon," she repeated, and Emil, who had been staring at her, drew himself up and reluctantly accepted the promise.