There was not a Wall-street banker or a politician among Neckart's confrères who would not have looked upon him as insane for the moment. This dull wisp of a woman to blot out all business, power, place, from his life? But, after all, there is no insanity so practical or long-lived. Why does A bull and bear the market, or B sell himself and his party, but for the sake of some ugly, faded woman and the commonplace children she has borne him? They are not thought worth notice by anybody but himself, but he ignores honesty, death, God himself, for them his life long. A plodding, shrewd fellow too, probably not a whit heroic.
Neckart was tramping along the common road which all of us know, but it seemed to him that he was breaking ground in a new world full of misty splendors and untried action. When he called to her his breath failed him, as it used to do when he was a boy wild with excitement. The sand under his feet, the brambles on the bank, the overarching sky, were not the same they were an hour ago. When the boat darted up to the shore, rocking as she held it fast with the oar, it seemed strange to him that she should speak in her ordinary tone. Did she not know?
She stood up in the bow steadying the skiff as he sprang into it. His hand touched her fingers for an instant, and she noticed that it shrank from hers.
"Did my father call me?"
"No: I wanted to talk to you alone."
She pushed from shore and dipped her oars: in a moment they were out in the current. It was a rippling belt of steely blue, the banks making indistinguishable ramparts of shadow on either side. Overhead was the soft starless twilight of June, through which a nighthawk flapped heavily and vanished. When it was gone they were alone. Could she not understand that they were alone? In this wide dark world that there were only they two, a man and a woman?
He could not distinguish her face, and her figure was but a light dark outline like a silhouette against the air. But the power of her womanhood was upon him, a something which Neckart had never felt before—a terrible, pure passion.
"Give me the oars," he said. "Let me help you," reaching forward to take them. His hand rested on hers accidentally: he did not remove it. Now did she understand? His mouth was closed. It seemed to him as if words were poor to say what was in his blood, in his soul, in the water, the air, the very ground.
She was startled, and turned to him wondering. The moon, rising higher, showed him the childish, sensitive mouth, the dark eyes heavy with tears, for she had been crying. What was that which gleamed through them, half answering him, frightened at itself? It seemed to him in this brief pause that they had been waiting all their lives for this word—he to speak and she to hear.
"Jane!" He took her hand in both of his and held it close, and then he threw it from him, drawing back: "My God! I had forgotten."