For I love to seem a little mad for the sake of the contrast of my own knowledge that I am sane.
“On a day like this,” said Pelleas, “one hardly knows whether one is living it or reading it.”
“If we are reading it,” said I, seeming to glance at Hobart Eddy, “I hope that it will turn out to be a love story.”
And it did—it did. We followed the curve of the walk past some flowering bushes and came on a bench, the kind of bench that rises from the ground at the mere footfall of two lovers. And there sat Viola, quite twice as lovely as when she had spent that week before our telephone on the landing, and beside her a Boy whose rôle no one who saw his face could doubt.
She was very lovely as she rose to greet us—indeed, Viola was one of those who prove the procession of the wild things and the stars to be an integral part of life. But now for her a new star had risen whose magnitude was unquestionable.
“Aunt Etarre!” cried Viola. “O, I am so glad to have you and Uncle Pelleas and Hobart know—first.”
And when she had presented her fine young lover and I had taken her in my arms, “You know,” she murmured, “he is your telephone, dear. Do you remember Uncle Pelleas calling him Telephone?”
Indeed, I do not think that we caught his real name that morning at all. And as for Pelleas and me, who are the first to love a lover, we found ourselves instant partisans of that fine young telephone of ours, so to speak, now that we finally saw him face to face. And I remember noting with a reminiscent thrill that the flowering shrub beneath which we were standing was Forsythia; and so did Pelleas, who is delighted with coincidences and hears in them the motifs of the commonplace.
“I told you this morning, Etarre, that something pleasant was about to happen,” he said with satisfaction.
“And so it has,” said I happily—and met Hobart Eddy’s eyes, fixed on mine and quite uncontrollably dancing.