The Call of the Blood

"That can't be. How could I stay here always?"

"I know."

"Unless," he said, as if some new thought had started suddenly into his

mind--"unless I were--"

He stopped. He had remembered his sensation in the sea that gray morning

of sirocco. He had remembered how he had played at dying.

"What?"

She looked at him and understood.

"Maurice--don't! I--I can't bear that!"

"Not one of us can know," he answered.

"I--I thought of that once," she said--"long ago, on the first night that

we were here. I don't know why--but perhaps it was because I was so

happy. I think it must have been that. I suppose, in this world, there

must aways be dread in one's happiness, the thought it may stop soon, it

may end. But why should it? Is God cruel? I think He wants us to be

happy."

"If he wants us--"

"And that we prevent ourselves from being happy. But we won't do that,

Maurice--you and I--will we?"

He did not answer.

"This world--nature--is so wonderfully beautiful, so happily beautiful.

Surely we can learn to be happy, to keep happy in it. Look at that sky,

that sea! Look at the plain over there by the foot of Etna, and the

coast-line fading away, and Etna. The God who created it all must have

meant men to be happy in such a world. It isn't my brain tells me that,

Maurice, it's my heart, my whole heart that you have made whole. And I

know it tells the truth."

Her words were terrible to him. The sound of a step, a figure standing

before her, a few Sicilian words--and all this world in which she gloried

would be changed for her. But she must not know. He felt that he would be

willing to die to keep her ignorant of the truth forever.

"Now we must try to sleep," he said, to prevent her from speaking any

more of the words that were torturing him. "We must have our siesta. I

had very little sleep last night."

"And I had none at all. But now--we're together."

He arranged the cushion for her. They lay in soft shadow and could see

the shining world. The distant gleams upon the sea spoke to her. She

fancied them voices rising out of the dream of the waters, voices from

the breast of nature that was the breast of God, saying that she was not

in error, that God did mean men to be happy, that they could be happy if

they would learn of Him.