He broke in before she had fairly spoken. “You were mistaken, Winifred; there was no one between us. O my foolish little hot-head! if you had not been so headlong in your self-sacrifice—if you had only waited till I came back—I could have showed you in ten minutes that there was no place for it. Mollie is married to John Gates and is very happy. And you and I—my little girl, how nearly our two lives have been spoiled! Sweetheart,” he said, laughing with a shaky voice, “I think I shall never dare let go of you again”—and he drew her back to him.
She hesitated—surrendered—clung to him with a long sobbing breath. “Oh, I have wanted you so, I have wanted you so!” she cried. “Oh, don’t be a dream and melt away this time!”
Will Strong, standing close in the darkness of the oleander, acquiring a life-long association with smell of Madeira vine and oleander and wet earth, cry of crickets and noise of sprinkling water, gathered himself together enough to creep away. He was going to realize it pretty soon, he thought; he did not yet; it seemed likely to be beyond endurance when he did. As he passed the door some one opened it, and the lamp-light streamed about him; Winifred looked around and saw his face for an instant, and then he had slipped away through a side gate.
He walked out from town across miles of dark plain, until he came to the empty channel of the stream by which they had sat in March. Underfoot not a blade of grass or green thing; no stranger would have believed that living thing had ever grown there. The flocks and herds had long since gone to the mountain pastures. The dry channel between shelvy banks of gravel showed white in the unclouded yet dull starlight. The air was lifeless, and faintly tainted with smoke from forest fires in the mountains.
Will threw himself down on his face, clutching with his fingers at the gritty dirt. He knew as surely then, looking forward to his life, as he will know at the end looking back, that this would never be an out-lived romance. Nor could he creep back into that temple of dreams from which Winifred’s own hand had lured him—it had crumbled to dust behind him. Nor was he like one who, losing a woman, loses only his best pleasure and best ambition; she was the vital condition to every pleasure, every ambition; losing her, he lost all. The realization clutched him by this time like a tiger. There was not a living creature within miles; a man might go down to primal depths, might drop even the restraint of the human in outcries and struggles as free as a tortured beast’s. It may be that solitude sees more such scenes than a decently decorous world would like to think.
Yet there was a sense upon him of some moral demand, some decision to be made; and in time he began to try to collect himself for it. It would seem as if there could hardly be a position that left less for him to decide. There was no question of renouncing—he had never had anything to renounce. Nevertheless, his instinct was correct in urging him to a moral conflict and a momentous decision. The question was simply whether he could pick up his life again, could find faith that anything was worth living for; or whether life was to be a hollow going through the forms—frustrated, purposeless, full of brooding regret and jealousy, shame, and sense of wrong. But he could not drag his bruised mind up to the question; he could not even think what it was. He lifted himself up, stepped down into the dry channel, and knelt on the white stones, obeying old association with the attitude; laid his arms and head on a shelf of the bank, and let the stunned and nerveless will lie passive, while the accumulated forces of years—of generations—passion and pain and despair and love, shame and bitterness and loyalty—trampled back and forth over him, fighting out for him his battle.
It was deathly, aggressively still; not an insect to chirp, not a tree to rustle; only bare earth and sodden air. After a long time Will raised his head and threw it back, looking up at the dull stars, while his outstretched hands lay clasped before him; he began to breathe more deeply. Not many minutes later he rose and walked homeward across the dim, wide waste.
It was afternoon of the next day when he stood at Mrs. Stutt’s door again. Mrs. Stutt looked at him with the embarrassment of conscious pity as she admitted him. People had been looking at him all day, on the street and in the office, with the same embarrassment and pity. Miss Northrop was packing, the good woman said; and, in an answer to her call, Winifred came out from her room into the little sitting-room. She, too, was evidently under agitation and embarrassment. Will had no doubt, from his first sight of her face, that she had seen and understood his haggard flight the evening before. He was himself entirely calm, as he held out his hand with a grave smile in silence.
Winifred tried to speak naturally.
“I had just sent a note to you, Will,” she said, as they sat down.