CHAPTER XIII
By choice, he started home through the wood. He wanted the feel of the grass, heather, and moss beneath his feet; the scent of wild flowers in his nostrils; the bending boughs of great trees over him; the minute sounds of insects in his ears; the flight of winged things in his sight. Deeper and deeper into the wood he plunged. There seemed something to be drunken like an impalpable spiritual elixir. He held out the arms of his being to it; he opened the pores of his body and soul to it. The far-off hum of the town's commerce and traffic seemed an insistent denial of the intangible thing for which he hungered, and he closed his ears to it. Presently he heard the sound of breaking twigs and the stirring of dry leaves behind the vines and boulders close by on his right, and he paused to listen. Then there fell upon his ears the soft voices of children, and, carefully parting the pliant branches of some willows, he saw in a little grassy glade Tilly's daughter and son. They were gathering flowers and ferns. Little Tilly had her chubby arms full, and Joel was plucking more.
It was a beautiful sight, and yet it drenched him with infinite pain. He was tempted to attract their attention, to take them into his arms again, but he checked the impulse.
"What is the use?" he muttered. "They are hers, not mine—his and hers, not mine and hers."
Softly he moved away. Presently he came to a fallen tree and sat down on it. He could no longer hear the children's voices. However, another sound broke the stillness about him. It was the rapid tread of some one hurrying through the wood in his direction. The branches of the bushes in front of him parted and Tilly stood facing him, her cheeks and brow flushed and damp from rapid walking. That she could be so beautiful as now he had never dreamed possible. The years had added indescribable charm and grace to her every movement, feature, and expression.
"Oh, John!" she cried, holding out her hands as appealingly and naïvely as of old, "the children are lost! They started for your mother's cabin, but haven't been there. There are dangerous places in this wood, and—"
He smiled reassuringly as he took her hands. "They are all right," he said. "They are just over there. I saw them only a moment ago."
Their hands clung together, but neither of them was cognizant of the fact. It was as if not a day had elapsed since they had parted. Forgetting every law of propriety, he drew her into his arms. Her uncovered head went as of old to his shoulder, and he was about to kiss her throbbing lips when, with her hand to his mouth, she suddenly checked him.
"No, no, John!" she said, and she disengaged herself from his embrace with a firm, resolute movement. "I understand how you feel, but you mustn't— I mustn't. I want to—yes, yes, I want to kiss you, but it would be wrong."
"Yes, it would be wrong," he groaned, and turned white. He sat down on the trunk of the tree. She stood before him. Neither spoke for a while, and the prattling voices of the children sounded on the warm, still air.