“You—you said you had been to Wauchung?” she remarked by way of breaking the silence.
“Yes. I stayed there about twenty minutes. You see—I can laugh at it now, but I couldn't then—I've been sort of a fool. When I wrote those letters and you didn't answer, and then when I went to your house and found that you'd come down here without a word to me, I was all broken up, and my nerve just left me. And then finally I did manage to get down here, and you didn't seem very glad to see me, and I don't doubt I was jealous of the Green fellow. I had forgotten then that after that night in Evanston—that when you had once let me know what you let me know then—you never would change. You see, I know you better than you think, Margaret. I've seen since that it was my fault—that I've been expecting you to say things it was my business to say for myself—and that there couldn't anything but little misunderstandings come between us after—after that. And—and———”
He paused to look at her. She would have liked a broad hat, a sunbonnet, anything that would have shielded her face from him, but her little tarn was merciless, and she could only study the path. Another moment and he had to fall behind her.
“Well, I guess that's all there is about it, Margaret. I was a fool, but I'm not a fool any longer. Here we are, where I saw you. Let's sit down on this log.” She slipped to the ground and deliberately faced away from him, looking off at the tumbling slopes of Cross Mountain. But he came around to the other side. “Now, Margaret, I've told you once, and you know all I could say without my telling you again. I love you: that's all. I can't go on any longer this way. I can't live without you—I've tried it—it's no use—so why can't we understand each other right now, and stop this playing at cross-purposes, and just be happy! You—you're all that I want in this world, Margaret—everything—everything.” He was leaning forward, playing nervously with a thorny twig and eagerly searching her face. “Tell me, Margaret—tell me if you will come right now into my life and make it worth something. I've been working day and night for other people—now I want to work for you. I want to see if I can't make a home for you—if I can't make you happy. When I've been working the hardest I've wondered, a good many times, what was the use of it all—what good it would do me if I should succeed, and make a lot of money and direct a lot of men. There's a passion for money, and there's a passion for power—I know a good many men that have one or the other or both of them—but one thing I've learned this year, Margaret, is that neither could ever fill my life and make it what I want to make it. Nothing, nobody but you can do that. Money and power mean worse than nothing to me unless they are means toward making you happy. That's what I want to do, Margaret, if you'll only give me the chance. Will you?”
There was a long, long time before she could do more than look off at the cloud-shadows floating up the opposite mountainside. They sat motionless; Halloran's hand had dropped from the twig; and the wonderful silence of the mountains wrapped them about. She wondered why he did not go on; he waited, breathless. She half turned; he caught her hand and gripped it with a nervous grasp. Her eyes sought the shadows again, wavered, were drawn, slowly, in spite of herself, to his face. And then he had her in his arms.
Oh, the glory of the painted mountains, the joy of the world about them! A hawk circled overhead, flew whistling off and lost himself in the forest. The squirrels and chipmunks, peering out from tree and rock, recalled their own young days and whisked away. The bees alone kept them company, but bee-workers have no time for love-making. And all those two knew was that the world was young and the world was many-tinted; that the sky was blue-and-white above; that all, everything, was theirs forever, in this world and in the world to come.
“Dear girl,” he murmured, with his lips at her ear, “there is no mistake this time? This is for always?”
Before the words were spoken her arms were around his neck, her lips were close to his, her heart was beating against his own. “Always,” she was repeating with him—“always—always!”