“Here is where I live,” she said. “I’ve had a lovely evening. Shall I see you again before you go back?”
I smiled, took the latchkey from her hand, opened the door, and stepped behind her, to her evident surprise, into the large, silent, musty-smelling hall. She darted a quick look about, but I ignored it, taking her hand and leading her quickly into the parlour, where, by the faint light from the hall, I could see an array of mid-Victorian plush. The house was silent. Still holding her hand, I drew her to me.
“I am not going back–alone,” I whispered. “You are going with me. Stella, I cannot live without you. Twin Fires is crying for its mistress. You are going back, too, away from the heat and dust and the town, into a house where the sweet air wanders, into the pines where the hermit sings and the pool is thirsty for your feet.”
I heard in the stillness a strange sob, and suddenly her head was on my breast and her tears were flowing. My arms closed about her.
Presently she lifted her face, and our lips met. She put up her hands and held my face within them. “So that was what the thrush said, after all,” she whispered, with a hint of a happy smile.
“To me, yes,” said I. “I didn’t dream it was to you. Was it to you?”
“That you’ll never know,” she answered, “and you’ll always be too stupid to guess.”
“Stupid! You called me that once before about the painters. Why were you angry about choosing the dining-room paint?”
She grew suddenly wistful. “I’ll tell you that,” she said. “It was–it was because you let a third person into our little drama of Twin Fires. I–I was a fool, maybe. But I was playing out a kind–a kind of dream of home building. Two can play such a dream, if they don’t speak of it. But not three. Then it becomes–it becomes, well, matter-of-facty, and people talk, and the bloom goes, and–you hurt me a little, that’s all.”
I could not reply for a moment. What man can before the wistful sweetness of a woman’s secret moods? I could only kiss her hair. Finally words came. “The dream shall be reality now,” I said, “and you and I together will make Twin Fires the loveliest spot in all the hills. To-morrow we’ll buy a stair carpet, and–lots of things–together.”