It fell so silent in the studio that Pelleas and I fancied those other lovers to have gone out through the glass doors into the garden. And when Pelleas proposed that we go to the north window and look away over the valley I think that we must have believed ourselves to be alone in the studio. At all events I recall that as we went up the room, lingering before a cast or a sketch or a bit of brass, Pelleas had slipped his arm about me; and his arm was still about me when we stood before the north window and he said:—
“Etarre—have you thought of something? Have you thought that some day we shall stand before the picture of our garden when we are old?”
This was a surprising reflection and we stood looking in each other’s eyes trying to fathom the mystery which we have not fathomed yet, for even now we go wondering how it can be that we, who were we, are yet not we; and still the love, the love persists. I know of nothing more wonderful in the world than that.
But to youth this thought brings an inevitable question:—
“Will you love me then as much as you love me now?” I asked inevitably; and when Pelleas had answered with the unavoidable “More,” I dare say that I promptly rebuked him with youth’s “But could you love me more?” And I am certain that he must have answered with the usual divine logic of “No, sweetheart.”
By which it will be seen that a May day in Eighteen Hundred and Forty-five was as modern as love itself.
Then for no reason at all we looked toward the west window; and there in the embrasure across the width of the great room were standing Mitty Greaves and Joel, Miss Deborah’s little lover-models, and both Mitty’s hands were crushed in Joel’s hands and he was looking into her lifted eyes as if he were settling for all time some such question as had just been gladdening us.
They did not see us. And as swiftly as if we had been the guilty ones, as indeed we were, we stole back to the other end of the studio, breathless with our secret. We felt such fellowship with all the world and particularly the world of lovers that so to have surprised them was, in a manner, a kind of delicious justification of ourselves. It was like having met ourselves in another world where the heavenly principle which we already knew maintained with a heavenly persistence.
“I dare say,” murmured Pelleas joyously, “I dare say that they think they love each other as much as we do.”
We were sitting in the window-seat, a little awed by our sudden sense of being sharers in such a universal secret, when Miss Deborah came back and forthwith summoned us all before the open fire. She had brought a great plate of home-made candy, thick with nuts.