Three Weeks

"The mountain top, then!" said Paul, "because there we can sit, and I can gaze at you, and learn more of life, close to your lips. I might not touch you in the launch, and you might look at others at the farm--and it seems as if I could not bear one glance or word turned from myself today!"

"You have chosen well. Mylyi moi."

The strange words pleased him; he must know their meaning, and learn to pronounce them himself. And all this between their dainty dishes took time, so it was an hour later before they started for their walk.

Up, up those winding paths among the firs and larches--up and up to the top. They dawdled slowly until they reached their goal. There, aloof from the beaten track, safe from the prying eyes of some chance stranger, they sat down, their backs against a giant rock, and all the glory of their lake and tree-tops to gaze at down below.

Paul had carried her cloak, and now they spread it out, covering their couch of moss and lichen. A soft languor was over them both. Passion was asleep for the while. But what exquisite bliss to sit thus, undisturbed in their eyrie--he and she alone in all the world.

Her words came back to him: "Love means to be clasped, to be close, to be touching, to be One!" Yes, they were One.

Then she began to talk softly, to open yet more windows in his soul to joy and sunshine. Her mind seemed so vast, each hour gave him fresh surprises in the perception of her infinite knowledge, while she charmed his fancy by her delicate modes of expression and un-English perfect pronunciation, no single word slurred over.

"Paul," she said presently, "how small seem the puny conventions of the world, do they not, beloved? Small as those little boats floating like scattered flower-leaves on the great lake down there. They were invented first to fill the place of the zest which fighting and holding one's own by the strength of one's arm originally gave to man. Now, he has only laws to combat, instead of a fiercer fellow creature--a dull exchange forsooth! Here are you and I--mated and wedded and perfectly happy--and yet by these foolish laws we are sinning, and you would be more nobly employed yawning with some bony English miss for your wife--and I by the side of a mad, drunken husband. All because the law made us swear a vow to keep for ever stationary an emotion! Emotion which we can no more control than the trees can which way the wind will blow their branches! To love! Oh! yes, they call it that at the altar--'joined together by God!' As likely as not two human creatures who hate each other, and are standing there swearing those impossibilities for some political purpose and advantage of their family. They desecrate the word love. Love is for us, Paul, who came together because our beings cried, 'This is my mate!' I should say nothing of it--oh no! if it had no pretence--marriage. If it were frankly a contract--'Yes, I give you my body and my dowry.' 'Yes, you give me your name and your state.' It is of the coarse, horrible things one must pass through in life--but to call the Great Spirit's blessing upon it, as an exaltation! To stand there and talk of love! Ah--that is what must make God angry, and I feel for Him."