Beyond The Great Oblivion | Page 2

he took her perfect face between his palms, and for a long moment studied it. He
looked at her waving hair, luxuriant and glinting rich brown gleams in the sunlight; her
thick, arched brows and hazel eyes, liquid and full of mystery as woodland pools; her
skin, sun-browned and satiny, with abundant tides of life-blood coursing vigorously in its
warm flush; her ripe lips. He studied her, and loved and yearned toward her; and in him
the passion leaped up like living flames.
His mouth met hers again.
"My beloved!" breathed he.
Her rounded arm, bare to the shoulder, circled his neck; she hid her face in his breast.
"Not yet--not yet!" she whispered.
On the white and pink flowered bough above, the robin, unafraid, gushed into a very
madness of golden song. And now the sun, higher risen, had struck the river into a broad
sheet of spun metal, over which the swallows--even as in the olden days--darted and
spiraled, with now and then a flick and dash of spray.
Far off, wool-white winding-sheets of mist were lifting, lagging along the purple hills,
clothed with inviolate forest.
Again the man tried to raise her head, to burn his kisses on her mouth. But she, instilled
with the eternal spirit of woman, denied him.
"No, not now--not yet!" she said; and in her eyes he read her meaning. "You must let me
go now, Allan. There's so much to do; we've got to be practical, you know."
"Practical! When I--I love--"
"Yes, I know, dear. But there's so much to be done first." Her womanly homemaking

instinct would not be gainsaid. "There's so much work! We've got the place to explore,
and the house to put in order, and--oh, thousands of things! And we must be very sensible
and very wise, you and I, boy. We're not children, you know. Now that we've lost our
home in the Metropolitan Tower, everything's got to be done over again."
"Except to learn to love you!" answered Stern, letting her go with reluctance.
She laughed back at him over her fur-clad shoulder as her sandaled feet followed the dim
remnants of what must once have been a broad driveway from the river road along the
beach, leading up to the bungalow.
Through the encroaching forest and the tangle of the degenerate apple-trees they could
see the concrete walls, with here or there a bit of white still gleaming through the
enlacements of ancient vines that had enveloped the whole structure--woodbine, ivy,
wisterias, and the maddest jungle of climbing roses, red and yellow, that ever made a nest
for love.
"Wait, I'll go first and clear the way for you," he said cheerily. His big bulk crashed down
the undergrowth. His hands held back the thorns and briers and the whipping hardbacks.
Together they slowly made way toward the house.
The orchard had lost all semblance of regularity, for in the thousand years since the hand
of man had pruned or cared for it Mother Nature had planted and replanted it times
beyond counting. Small and gnarled and crooked the trees were, as the spine-tree souls in
Dante's dolorosa selva.
Here or there a pine had rooted and grown tall, killing the lesser tribe of green things
underneath.
Warm lay the sun there. A pleasant carpet of last year's leaves and pine-spills covered the
earth.
"It's all ready and waiting for us, all embowered and carpeted for love," said Allan
musingly. "I wonder what old Van Amburg would think of his estate if he could see it
now? And what would he say to our having it? You know, Van was pretty ugly to me at
one time about my political opinion--but that's all past and forgotten now. Only this is
certainly an odd turn of fate."
He helped the girl over a fallen log, rotted with moss and lichens. "It's one awful mess,
sure as you're born. But as quick as my arm gets back into shape, we'll have order out of
chaos before you know it. Some fine day you and I will drive our sixty horse-power car
up an asphalt road here, and--"
"A car? Why, what do you mean? There's not such a thing left in the whole world as a
car!"
The engineer tapped his forehead with his finger.

"Oh, yes, there is. I've got several models right here. You just wait till you see the
workshop I'm going to install on the bank of the river with current-power, and with an
electric light plant for the whole place, and with--"
Beatrice laughed.
"You dear, big, dreaming boy!" she interrupted. Then with a kiss she took his hand.
"Come," said she. "We're home now. And there's work to do."


CHAPTER II
SETTLING DOWN
Together, in the comradeship of love