When the birds fly south

by Stanton A. Coblentz

"It is too late!" she sighed. "Too late! I could not go now. It is too cold. I would not know the way. The last bird has flown south. It is too late!"

In her tones there was such finality that I knew it would be futile to protest.

For minutes I stood there before her in silence, burdened with a sadness that equalled her own, face to face with a certainty I had never contemplated before. Perhaps, in that first moment of realization, I did not sufficiently conceal my forebodings, for in the end I felt a gentle hand tugging at mine, and looked down to see a wanly smiling face peering at me with pathetic kindliness and sympathy. And for a moment I enveloped Yasma's frail figure in an embrace of such fury as I had seldom bestowed.

But her form, at first rigid, quickly grew limp in my clasp; and, with renewed apprehensions, I released her.

For a few seconds she turned from me to stare into the dwindling fire; then her whole body was shaken by a spasmodic twinge, like an electric shock. And facing me again, she murmured, sorrowfully, "It is too late, my beloved, too late. But do not be sad. It is no one's fault. You could not be different if you wished, and I could not be. And one of us must suffer the cost."

"Do not say that, Yasma!" I protested, in rising alarm. "What cost can there be?"

"Yulada alone can answer," she returned, calmly but in tones of certainty. "But better that it should be I—"

"No, no!" I interrupted, furiously. "It is I that should suffer—I—"

But my sentence was never finished. Yasma had again turned aside, her whole form suddenly convulsive. It was long before I could comfort her; and late into that dismal night, while the wind clamored even more frantically without and the fire within sank untended to a smoky glow, I hovered despairingly at her side, warming the chilly hands, coaxing and caressing and pleading, murmuring reassuring words I could not feel, and all the while disconsolate because she seemed beyond the power of my consolation.

Eventually, after what may have been hours, the tumult ebbed away, and she lay impassive in my arms, like one meekly resigned when there is no longer any purpose in struggling. Her eyes had grown listless and weary; her whole frame seemed without energy; it was as though she had expended her last reserves of emotion. And in the end sleep came, impartial sleep that could never have been more welcome; and she lay huddled in my arms, unconscious of my long dreary vigil, her breath rising and falling so faintly that at times I scarcely heard it at all and listened in alarm for the feeble, reassuring beating of her heart.