“Ah,” said Corydon, “if you only will!”
“I will do anything I can,” he said. “I am ashamed of not having helped you before.”
They had risen and started towards the house. “Can’t you come to-morrow, and we can talk it over,” he said.
“But I thought you were going to work,” she objected.
“I can spare another day,” he replied. “A rest won’t hurt me, I know. And it’s been a real pleasure to talk to you this afternoon.”
So they settled it; and Thyrsis saw them off in the boat, and then he went back to the little cabin.
On the steps he stood still. “Corydon!” he muttered. “Little Corydon!”
That was always the way he thought of her; not only because he had known her when she was a child, but because this expressed his conception of her—she was so gentle and peaceable and meek. She was now eighteen, and he was only twenty, but he felt towards her as a grandfather might. But now had come this new revelation, that astonished him. She had been deeply stirred by his work—she had loved it; and this was no affectation, it was out of her inmost heart. And she was not really contented at all—she had quite a hunger for life in her!
It had been like an explosion; the barriers had been destroyed between them, and he saw her as she really was. And he could hardly believe it—all through the adventures that followed he would find himself standing in the same kind of daze, whispering to himself—“Corydon! Little Corydon!”
He did not try to do any work that evening. He thought about her, and the problem of her life. She had stirred him strangely; he saw her beautiful with a new kind of beauty. He resolved that he would put her upon the way to some of the joy she sought.