It was a woman who came to the first man in the Garden. She carried fruit of the knowledge-tree of good and evil and bade him eat. Yet perchance she loved him no less on that account.
V
It was a quarter to three. The storm had rolled and clacked above the sleeping town and countryside. The office had been lighted by swift and vivid whips of electric violence. The deluge of nocturnal rain had washed the earth cool and pure again. Steadily in a corner trough outside, an eaves spout emptied with a singing sound,—even as the deserted streets ran mud and rivulets.
The girl still lay in Nathan’s arms. She had not moved. Neither had moved. The boy’s muscles ached. The air was horribly stuffy, almost sickish. Morning would come now—was coming—swiftly.
“Carrie,” said the boy huskily, “there’s a lot we owe to ourselves—to our own—happiness! In fourteen months I’ll be of age. Fourteen months can be a long, long time—or awful, awful short. Suppose, dear, you do as your grandfather wishes—go back to Ohio. Stay there—as best you can. Live as I’ll be living—for the day I’m twenty-one. On that day you and I’ll be married. That’s how much I love you, dear!”
The girl sensed rebuke in his pronouncement. Her face burned. Unconsciously she shrank away. She wholly lacked the capacity to appreciate the depth of the lad’s great affection or the worth of his soul thereby disclosed. The lad went on quickly:
“Go away as if we didn’t mind—as if we agreed to the separation. But I’ll find some one in town to whom you can mail your letters—who’ll slip them safely to me without dad knowing. We can write——”
“Nathan, are you so weak, so under your father’s thumb, that you’re afraid to outwit him?”
“No,” the other whispered. “I’m not.” And he spoke the truth. “I love you, dear. I told you that before.”
“Do you think it’s easy for me to go?” The girl’s voice was tight with pain. What was it she feared? What had happened that night, affecting them both so vitally?