"How black the water looks," she faltered.
"I will go to your father and demand your hand." She was trembling.
"You do not know what a Knickerbocker is—an awful creature with a hundred gorgon heads constantly leering and preaching; detecting flaws in other people's families. One head will tell you that you play the organ in St. Paul's, and another may see that your coat is a trifle worn. We're not the only clan of them in the land."
"We must not fear them—not to-night, when love is filling the world."
"Only one of my grandmothers married for love, and she was thought to be disgraced."
"You will follow her?" he asked, a catch in his voice.
Juma was signalling for them to part, and on his forehead she kissed "I will!"
Now alone on the dark staircase she meditated on his words. When that malignant crone, Gossip, started on her round, what would happen?
Suddenly the voice of her father adding up the indigo cargo fell upon her ears. He would end their happiness; a man powerful enough to kill the spirit of Easter in his home could do anything. Creeping through the narrow passage she came to the great north balcony window. There she paused and raised her eyes to the dome of the night. Long lines of stars were strung across the meadows of heaven. The dials of the world seemed suddenly stilled. Below the infinite peace a budding landscape sloped gently into a placid sea. Myriads of little lights in humble cots blinked an answer to the fires above. Leaning on the broad window-seat of blackened Jersey oak she tried to descry his dwelling, but the tree-tops shut it away.
A few hours before, he had asked her to be his wife, and she, a Knickerbocker, had thrilled at his words. Like a tide the memory of his love swept back to her. Then on its surges came the stupor of desolation. The gates of Knickerbocker pride were strong. A second David might fail to force them. All her dreams were fantasies, with no bearing upon reality. All her hopes were sunbeams vanquished by one dark shadow. To her distorted imagination her family seemed accursed. Every face bore some mark of it, even the row of dim portraits in the room below. But, ah! there was one, a face turned to the rafters of the attic, whose bright eyes and red lips knew love untinctured by the dross of the world. In the darkness it rose before her strangely insistent. As in a time-blurred mirror she looked and saw herself, and the feeling, though uncanny, gave her a sense of comfort.