She put out her hand toward mine; mine closed over it.
“Cornelia,” I said, “I loved you twenty years ago, and—in some ways I haven’t changed much since. Have you?”
“Please—please don’t!” she said, gently withdrawing her hand.
“And when the silence fell around us here, a little while ago,” I continued, “and the meadowlark sang in it, and then it was still again, didn’t you feel, didn’t you know—Cornelia, tell me what the silence said to you, when it grew too intense, and you broke it.”
She lifted her head and seemed for a moment to be following the flight of a sea gull winging into the darkening West. Then she turned her cool gray eyes upon mine, steadily, steadily, till their flame burnt under my ribs and close about my heart.
“The silence said to me,” she replied, “that I had been a very foolish woman—Isn’t it strange how suddenly the color is leaving the sky! You can almost see it fade while you watch it—like the glow in an electric toaster, when you turn it off.” She rose, as if talk were over, and we were going home. I followed, bent on a continuation.
“Yes,” I said, “I suppose the sun over there behind the cloud bank has just sunk under the sea. You would think someone had pressed a button. It reminds me of the Ancient Mariner—‘At one stride, came the dark.’ But how have you been a ‘foolish’ woman?”
“Perhaps,” said Cornelia, “we had better return the long way, by the road. The dusk does come fast, and I don’t like the short cut over the mesa then. There are sometimes snakes.”
“I don’t mind snakes,” I replied: “they add a spice. But if the way by the road is longer, I am for the road.”