“Oh,” said Upton, with evident relief. He glanced about him timidly, away from her sweeping searching eyes: “If you’ll step into the parlour, Miss Halo—”
She shook her head. “No, I won’t do that, or your mother’ll feel she ought to leave her supper to receive me. And I’ve only got a minute—I’m meeting a friend at the station,” she reminded herself with a start, for that also she had been near forgetting. “So if you’ll just ask your cousin—Vance, that’s his name, isn’t it?—ask him to come out here and say two words to me …”
“Oh, certainly,” Upton agreed. He turned back into the house, but the visitor caught him by the sleeve. “Upton! Listen. Don’t mention my name; don’t tell Vance I’m here. Just say it’s somebody with a message—somebody with a message,” she repeated, trying with her sharp italics to bore the fact into the youth’s brain.
“Oh, certainly,” Upton repeated. He walked away to the back of the house, and Héloïse, already partly rid of her burden of self-reproach, as she always tended to be the moment she had given it expression, stood looking absently over the garden, the broken-down fence, and the darkness already gathering in the folds of the hills.
She heard another step, and saw Vance Weston. He stood gazing at her with wide open eyes, his face small and drawn from his recent illness. In the twilight of the library at the Willows he had not looked so boyish; now she was struck by his frailness and immaturity, and felt sorrier than ever that she had failed to keep her promise.
“It’s me, Vance. I’ve come to apologize about this afternoon.”
“Oh—” he began, as awkwardly as Upton.
“You went to the Willows after lunch, and waited for me?” He nodded without speaking.
“Waited hours?”
“I didn’t mind. I sat in the porch. I liked it.”
“Well, it was hideous of me—hideous! I don’t know how …”
He looked at her in surprise. “How could you help it? Upton said something prevented you—”
“Ah—then he told you I was here?” She laughed with amusement, and relapsed into self-accusal. “It was worse, much worse! What I told Upton wasn’t true. Nothing prevented me—and nobody. I simply forgot. The day was so heavenly—wasn’t it? I went off alone, up the mountain, to bathe in a pool in the woods; and I took some books and the dogs; and I forgot everything. … Can you ever forgive me?” She stretched her hands out, but he stood and looked at them, bewildered, as if not believing such a gift could be meant for him, even for the space of a touch.
“A pool in the woods … is it anywhere near here? Could I get to it?” he questioned eagerly.
“Of course you could. I’ll take you. It’s the divinest place! In weather like this it’s better even than books. … But you shall see the books too,” she added, suffusing him in her sudden smile.
He reddened slightly, with the flush of convalescence, which leaves the face paler when it goes. “I—that’s awfully kind …”
“No. I’m never kind. But I like to share my treasures—sometimes.” She continued to look at him, noting with a sort of detached appreciation, as characteristic of her as the outward glow, the good shape of his head with its shock of rumpled brown hair, the breadth and modelling of his forehead, and the strong planting of the nose between his widely set eyes, the gray eyes which sometimes seemed to bring his whole self to their surface, and sometimes to draw it back into an inaccessible retreat, as when she had surprised him over “Kubla Khan” at the Willows. Decidedly, she thought, in saying that she had not gone too far. She was jealous of what she called her treasures; but here was someone with whom they might be shared. Yes, she would let him see the pool. … But when? Her life was always crowded with projects, engagements, fragments of unfinished work; there were always people arriving at Eaglewood, or opportunities to dash off from it (with visitors who had motors), or passionately absorbing things to be dealt with on the spot—as she was dealing with the Weston boy now. Yes, better do it at once, before other things crowded in. It would be the friendliest way of wiping out her forgetfulness. …
“Do you get up early?” she asked. “Do you care about sunrises?”
He coloured again, with pleasure, as it seemed. Her elliptic interrogatory seemed to have no fears for him. “Yes. I guess the pool would be great then,” he said.
“Oh, well, we’ll see the Hudson first. You can’t see it from here, can you?” She felt a sudden contempt for the unimaginativeness of living like the Tracys. “You’ve no idea what it is from Eaglewood—and better still from up above—from the ridge of Thundertop. The river’s like a sea at that hour. You don’t speak German?” He made a negative gesture, and she added: “I was only going to quote something from Faust—you’ll read it some day—but now just listen to the sound:
“ ‘Die Sonne tönt nach alter Weise
In Brudersphären Wettgesang.
Und ihre vorgeschriebene Reise
Vollendet sie mit Donnergang.
Ihr Anblick giebt den Engeln Stärke
Wenn keiner sie ergründen mag,
Die unbegreiflich hohen Werke
Sind herrlich wie am ersten Tag.’
“Isn’t that beautiful to you, just as mere music, without any meaning? Besides, that whole question of meaning in poetry … I have an old friend I wrangle with about it by the hour …” She broke off, and gathering up her whole attention, poured it for a moment into the gaze she
