The Hills of Desire

by Richard Aumerle Maher

Out of that thought had grown the conviction which she had written in the line to Jimmie. For this life their love had been spoiled. They were not to have it.

But as she still stood there a whisper had come to her—she had never thought to question whence it came—a clear, flashing, fearful hope had come to her. Jimmie and she might not live this life together. But one day—the sweet hope sang high to her heart—Jimmie and she, they two, would take the road together, the road that led through the Curtain to the Great Adventure in the Hills of All Desire.

She had lived through the years on the breath of that whisper which had come to her. She had believed in it as a promise. She had kept it in her heart. Only in the very secretest of her communings with the Jimmie to whom her heart constantly talked had she told it to him.

She had hardly put her thought into words, but it was a part of her faith in love. She would not believe that love like hers could die. She did not know how, or in what terms, but she was sure that, somehow, she and Jimmie would find the broken line of love and go on with it.

It had seemed so simple, when it was not near. She had all the time been sure that when Jimmie was ready to go—she had not thought that it would be very long—then she would know it, and she would be ready to go with him.

Many times in the three years she had known when Jimmie was in danger. Twice she had seen his name among Americans wounded with the Canadians. But she had not needed that outward evidence. She had often been able to call him and to feel his response. Though she had never before been able to see him, she had at all times known that he was living and going on.

And lately she had become almost bold. She had felt the coming of what was to be the great moment. She thought that she had felt the shadow of the wings of death—and she was not afraid. She believed that Jimmie would soon be taking the road into the Beyond—and she grew almost openly confident that she was going with him.

She had lived on the very tip of every moment. With a strange defiance of reality, she, a soundly healthy young woman—not knowingly exposed to any more danger than twenty million other inhabitants of France, went into every action of her waking hours with a sort of provisional apology. It might be that she should not have time to finish that action. If so, would some one please see to it.

She had forgotten completely that other woman. She remembered only the dear and perfect love of those months alone with Jimmie; the joy of the irresponsible hours upon the road; the fearful sweetness of their utter seclusion in the hills and their complete dependence one upon the other. She seemed to see now that they had, in those months, realized all the very best that this world gives in love.

She had even come to think that she was glad that their perfect days of love had ended in a sharp crash. How pitiful it would have been to have seen that love, which was all beauty and tenderness and sacrifice on both sides, dribble down into the commonplace of discontent, or, at best, a kindly tolerance! She was glad that it had come to an end while it was yet a perfect, beautiful thing; glad that she could link those months of wonder love directly with the wonder and mystery of what was to come to them.