"Good-bye for to-night, Beth."
May was singing a soft lullaby as she came up the walk. Only a moment! Yet what a revelation a moment may bring to these hearts of ours! A look, a touch, and something live is throbbing within! We cannot speak it. We dare not name it. For, oh, hush, 'tis a sacred hour in a woman's life.
Beth went straight to her room, and sat by the open window in the star-light. Some boys were singing an old Scotch ballad as they passed in the street below; the moon was rising silvery above the blue Erie; the white petals of apple-blossoms floated downward in the night air, and in it all she saw but one face—a face with great, dark, tender eyes, that soothed her with their silence. Soothed? Ah, yes! She felt like a babe to-night, cradled in the arms of something, she knew not what—something holy, eternal and calm. And this was love. She had craved it often—wondered how it would come to her—and it was just Arthur, after all, her childhood's friend, Arthur—but yet how changed! He was not the same. She felt it dimly. The Arthur of her girlhood was gone. They were man and woman now. She had not known this Arthur as he was now. A veil seemed to have been suddenly drawn from his face, and she saw in him—her ideal. There were tears in her eyes as she gazed heavenward. She had thought to journey to heathen lands alone, single-handed to fight the battle, and now—"Arthur—Arthur!" she called in a soft, sweet whisper as she drooped her smiling face. What mattered all her blind shilly-shally fancies about his nature not being poetic? There was more poetry buried in that heart of his than she had ever dreamed. "I can never, never marry Arthur!" she had often told herself. She laughed now as she thought of it, and it was late before she slept, for she seemed to see those eyes looking at her in the darkness—so familiar, yet so new and changed! She awoke for a moment in the grey light just before dawn, and she could see him still; her hand yet thrilled from his touch. She heard the hoarse whistle of a steamer on the lake; the rooks were cawing in the elm-tree over the roof, and she fell asleep again.
"Good-morning, Rip Van Winkle," said May, when she entered the breakfast-room.
"Why, is that clock—just look at the time! I forgot to wind my watch last night, and I hadn't the faintest idea what time it was when I got up this morning!"
"Good-bye for to-night, Beth," he had said, and he was going away to-morrow morning, so he would surely come to-day. No wonder she went about with an absent smile on her face, and did everything in the craziest possible way. It was so precious, this newly-found secret of hers! She knew her own heart now. There was no possibility of her misunderstanding herself in the future. The afternoon was wearing away, and she sat waiting and listening. Ding! No, that was only a beggar-woman at the door. Ding, again! Yes, that was Arthur! Then she grew frightened. How could she look into his eyes? He would read her secret there. He sat down before her, and a formal coldness seemed to paralyze them both.
"I have come to bid you good-bye, Miss Woodburn!"
Miss Woodburn! He had never called her that before. How cold his voice sounded in her ears!
"Are you going back to Victoria College?" she asked.
"No, to the Wesleyan. Are you going to spend your summer in Briarsfield?"