Blue-Bird Weather

And he answered the question as in a dream: "I love you. I want you for

my wife. I want you to love me. You are the first woman I have cared

for. All that you are I want--no more than you are. You, as you are now,

are all that I care for in the world. Life is young for us both, yet.

Let us grow up together--if you can love me. Can you?"

"I don't know."

"Can you not care for me a little, Molly?"

"I do. I know--nothing about--love--real love."

"Can you not imagine it, dear?"

"I--it is what I have imagined--a man--like you--coming this way into

my loneliness. I recognize it. I have dreamed that it was like this.

What is it that I should do--if this is really to come true?"

"Love me."

"I would--if I knew how. I don't know how," she said wistfully. "My

heart is so full--already--of your goodness--I--and then this dream I

have dreamed--that a man like you should come here and say this to

me----"

"Is it in you to love me?"

"I'll try--if you'll tell me what to do--how to show it--to

understand----"

He drew her closer, unresisting, and looked deep into her young eyes,

and kissed them, and then her lips, till they grew warmer and her breath

came fragrant and uneven.

"Can you love me?"

"Yes," she whispered.

"Are you sure?"

"Y-yes."

For a moment's exquisite silence she rested her flushed face against his

shoulder, then lifted it, averted, and stepped aside, out of the circle

of his arms. Head lowered, she stood there, motionless in the starlight,

arms hanging straight; then, as he came to her, she lifted her proud

little head and laid both her hands in his.

"Of those things," she said, "that a woman should be to the man she

loves, and say to that man, I am ignorant. Even how to speak to

you--now--I do not know. It is all a dream to me--except that, in my

heart, I know that I do love you. But I think that was so from the

beginning, and after you have gone away I should have realized it some

day."

"You darling!" he whispered. Again she surrendered to him, exquisite in

her ignorance, passive at first, then tremulously responsive. And at

last her head drooped and fell on his shoulder, and he held her for a

little longer, then released her.