“You will ride, will you not? I see you have your habit on.” And with that, Justine assenting, he led her down the steps and aided her to the saddle.
There are numberless tentative things in life, and among them an amble through green, deserted lanes, where only birds and flowers are, has witcheries of its own. However perturbed the spirit may have been, there is that in the glow of the morning and the gait of a horse that can make it wholly serene. The traveller from Sicily will, if you let him, tell of hours so fair that even the bandits are coerced. Man cannot always be centred in self; and when to the influence of nature is added the companionship of one whose presence allures, the charm is complete. And Roland, to whom such things hitherto had been as accessories, this morning felt their spell. The roomy squalor of the village had been passed long since. They had entered a road where the trees arched and nearly hid the sky, but through the branches an eager sunlight found its way. Now and then in a clearing they would happen on some shabby, silent house, the garden gay with the tender pink of blossoming peach; and at times, from behind a log or straight from the earth, a diminutive negro would start like a kobold in a dream and offer, in an abashed, uncertain way, a bunch of white violets in exchange for coin. And once an old man, trudging along, saluted them with a fine parabola of hat and hand; and once they encountered a slatternly negress, very fat and pompous, seated behind a donkey she could have carried in her arms. But practically the road was deserted, fragrant, and still.
And now, as they rode on, interchanging only haphazard remarks, Roland swung himself from his horse, and, plucking a spray of arbutus, handed it to the girl.
“Take it,” he said; “it is all I have.”
His horse had wandered on a step and was nibbing at the grass, and, as he stood looking up at her, for the first time it occurred to him that she was fair. However a girl may seem in a ballroom, if she ever looks well she looks best in the saddle; and Justine, in spite of his criticism, did not sit her horse badly. Her gray habit, the high white collar and open vest, brought out the snuff-color of her eyes and hair. Her cheeks, too, this morning must have recovered some of the flush they had lost, or else the sun had been using its palette, for in them was the hue of the flower he had gathered and held.
She took it and inserted the stem in the lapel of her coat.
“Are you going?” she asked.
“What would you think of me if I remained?”
“What would I? I would think—”
As she hesitated she turned. He could see now it was not the sun alone that had been at work upon her face.
“Let me tell. You would think that a man with two arms for sole income has no right to linger in the neighborhood of a girl such as you. That is what you would think, what anyone would think; and while I care little enough about the existence which I lead in the minds of other people, yet I do care for your esteem. If I stay, I lose it. I should lose, too, my own; let me keep them both and go.”
“I do not yet see why?”
“You don’t!” The answer was so abrupt in tone that you would have said he was irritated at her remark, judging it unnecessary and ill-timed. “You don’t!” he repeated. “Go back a bit, and perhaps you will remember that after I saw you at your house I did not come back again.”
“I do indeed remember.”
“The next day I saw you in the Park; I was careful not to return.”
“But what have I done? You said last night—”
“Why do you question? You know it is because I love you.”
“Then you shall not go.”
“I must.”
“You shall not, I say.”
“And I shall take with me the knowledge that the one woman I have loved is the one woman I have been forced to leave.”
“Roland Mistrial, how can you bear the name you do and yet be so unjust? If you leave me now it is because you care more for yourself than you ever could for me. It is not on my account you go: it is because you fear the world. There were heroes once that faced it.”
“Yes, and there were Circes then, as now.”
As he made that trite reply his face relaxed, and into it came an expression of such abandonment that the girl could see the day was won.
“Tell me—you will not go?”
Roland caught her hand in his, and, drawing back the gauntlet of kid, he kissed her on the wrist. “I will never leave you now,” he answered; “Only promise you will not regret.”
“Regret!” She smiled at the speech—or was it a smile? Her lips had moved, but it was as though they had done so in answer to some prompting of her soul. “Regret! Do you remember you asked me what I would think if you remained? Well, I thought, if you did, there were dreams which do come true.”
At this avowal she was so radiant yet so troubled that Roland detained her hand. “She really loves,” he mused; “and so do I.” And it may be, the forest aiding, that, in the answering pressure which he gave, such heart as he had went out and mingled with her own.
“Between us now,” he murmured, “it is for all of time.”
“Roland, how I waited for you!”
Again her lips moved and she seemed to smile, but now her eyes were no longer in his, they
