But we cannot always command lack of remembrance and get obedience. There is something better. Nature has her ways. One of her ways is to have given us eyes, and how she did place us under her soft thumb when she did that!
They said very little, but they looked into each other's eyes. They couldn't help that very well. Then the laws of life worked themselves out. It is a way they have.
What are you going to do with a woman's eyes? Inside the depths of a woman's eyes, lurking lovingly, sometimes, are all the revelations that must come when the time comes and reflect themselves into the looking-glasses God provides to tell us of the thoughts of others. There are different women and different eyes, of course. We must take our chances on that.
And, so as said, they did not even refer to the happenings of the day before or of any of the context of all that had occurred. They did not refer to the great hound. They talked of nothing but of things incidental. She asked him when they would probably be released from their snow imprisonment and he told her that it would be within two days.
And, so they separated and had practically said nothing.
But eyes, as announced, are the most astonishing things. They had talked a great deal that morning. As we human beings are made, they are a little the neatest and finest expression of all there is in life. They hold and send forth the beaconing flash from every intellectual and loving light-house in the world. They are, with what they say, the confessional between any two human beings, man and woman, in the world. They are the mediums of revelation. No wonder that those who know want sometimes, foolishly, it may be, to die when to them comes a physical blindness which may not be remedied.
And this man and woman looked into each other's eyes, he hardly comprehending at first but having the great consciousness come to him at last, she doubtless understanding sooner, and even more acutely.
Intelligent fluttering of the heart is what might possibly be said of her. She was alarmed and yet, from another point of view, entirely without fear. She realized the situation better than did he. Ever since the world was first firmly encrusted out of the steaming fog woman has been the braver of the two in our love affairs.
Exceedingly clever as these two people were, there is no opportunity to do any exceedingly brilliant work in telling all about them. Brought down to its last analysis, theirs was but the plain, old-fashioned love which has stood the test of all the centuries and which, in our modern English and American times, has the flavor of the hollyhocks which grow about the front fence and the old-fashioned pinks in the yard and a lot of other things. We have new ways in other things, but love has not changed much since the time of Egypt. Doubtless it was about the same way before.
"What is the day of the week, please," had been Stafford's last utterance. She did not even reply. She looked back into his eyes and that look, if it could have been weighed, could have been considered by nothing but Troy weight, the jeweller's weight, and then it would have been too coarse for the occasion and the demand.