In that walk beside him, toiling slowly on and on in the bright, far solitude of those empty fields, where even their hands might not touch, they two were so heart-close—so heavenly, so fulfillingly near!
Once he whispered in a yearning distress, “Why are you crying?” And she answered through those welling tears:
“I’m only crying because I’m so glad you’re here!”
After a while there was a sound of wheels—wheels! Only a sulky, it proved to be—a mere half-wagon set low down in the springs, and a trotting horse in front, driven by a round-faced boy in a derby hat, the turnout casting long, thin shadows ahead before Girard stopped it.
“You’ll have to take another passenger,” he said, after explaining matters to the half-unwilling boy, who crowded himself at last to the farthest edge of the seat, so that Lois might take possession of the six inches allotted to her.
She held out her arms hastily. “My boy!” she said, but it was a voice that had hope in it once more.
“Oh, yes, I forgot; here’s the baby,” said Girard, looking curiously at the bundle before handing it to her. “We’ll meet you at the Haledon station very soon now; my friends will have left my hat and coat there for me.”
In another moment the little vehicle was out of sight, jogging around a bend of the road.
So still was the night! Only that long, curving runnel of the brook again accompanied the silence. Not a leaf moved on the bushes of those far-swelling fields or on the hill that hid their summit; the air was like the moonlight, so fragrantly cool with the odors of the damp fern and birch. The straight, supple figure of Girard still stood in the roadway, bareheaded, with that powerful effect which he had, even here, of absorbing all the life of the scene.
Dosia experienced the inexplicable feeling of the girl alone, for the first time, with the man who loves her and whom she loves. At that moment she loved him so much that she would have fled anywhere in the world from him.