The Brimming Cup | Page 9

she's some old woman, and
I bet you I won't see anything remarkable in her. Except that wild name.
Is it Miss Touclé, or Mrs. Touclé?"
The girl burst into laughter at this, foolish, light-hearted mirth which
drenched the air all about her with the perfume of young gaiety. "Is it
Miss Druid, or Mrs. Druid?" was all she would say.
She looked up at him, her eyes shining, and cried between her gusts of
laughter, as if astonished, "Why, I do believe we are going to be happy
together. I do believe it's going to be fun to live with you."

His appalled surprise that she had again fallen into the pit of incredulity
was, this time, only half humorous. "For God's sake, what did you
think!"
She answered, reasonably, "Well, nobody ever is happy together, either
in books or out of them. Of all the million, million love-affairs that
have happened, does anybody ever claim any one to have been happy?"
His breath was taken away. He asked helplessly, "Well, why are you
marrying me?"
She replied very seriously, "Because I can't help myself, dear Neale.
Isn't that the only reason you're marrying me?"
He looked at her long, his nostrils quivering a little, gave a short
exclamation which seemed to carry away all his impatience, and finally
said, quietly enough, "Why, yes, of course, if that's the way you want to
put it. You can say it in a thousand thousand different ways."
He added with a sudden fury, "And never one of them will come
anywhere near expressing it. Look here, Marise, I don't believe you
have the faintest, faintest idea how big this thing is. All these fool
clever ways of talking about it . . . they're just a screen set up in front of
it, to my mind. It's enough sight bigger than just you or me, or
happiness or unhappiness. It's the meaning of everything!"
She considered this thoughtfully. "I don't believe I really know what
you mean," she said, "or anyhow that I feel what you mean. I have had
dreams sometimes, that I'm in something awfully big and irresistible
like a great river, flowing somewhere; but I've never felt it in waking
hours. I wish I could. It's lovely in dreams. You evidently do, even
awake."
He said, confidently, "You will, later on."
She ventured, "You mean, maybe, that I'm so shaken up by the little
surface waves, chopping back and forth, that I don't feel the big
current."

"It's there. Whether you feel it or not," he made final answer to her
doubt.
She murmured, "I wonder if there is anything in that silly,
old-fashioned notion that men are stronger than women, and that
women must lean on men's strength, to live?"
"Everybody's got to lean on his own strength, sooner or later," he told
her with a touch of grimness.
"You just won't be romantic!" she cried admiringly.
"I really love you, Marise," he answered profoundly; and on this
rock-like assurance she sank down with a long breath of trust.
* * * * *
The sun was dipping into the sea now, emblazoning the sky with a last
flaming half-circle of pure color, but the light had left the dusky edges
of the world. Already the far mountains were dimmed, and the plain,
passing from one deep twilight color to another more somber, was
quietly sinking into darkness as into the strong loving arms of ultimate
dissolution.
The girl spoke in a dreamy twilight tone, "Neale dear, this is not a
romantic idea . . . honestly, I do wish we could both die right here and
never go down to the plain any more. Don't you feel that? Not at all?"
His voice rang out, resonant and harsh as a bugle-note, "No, I do not,
not at all, not for a single moment. I've too much ahead of me to feel
that. And so have you!"
"There comes the cable-car, climbing up to get us," she said faintly.
"And we will go down from this high place of safety into that dark
plain, and we will have to cross it, painfully, step by step. Dare you
promise me we will not lose our way?" she challenged him.
"I don't promise you anything about it," he answered, taking her hand

in his. "Only I'm not a bit afraid of the plain, nor the way that's before
us. Come along with me, and let's see what's there."
"Do you think you know where we are going, across that plain?" she
asked him painfully; "even where we are to try to go?"
"No, I don't know, now," he answered undismayed. "But I think we will
know it as we go along because we will be together."
* * * * *
The