The Indian on the Trail | Page 6

forehead. Every blond hair on that dear head is mine! Its upward tilt on the long throat is adorable! Have you any gesture or personal trait which does not thrill me? But best of all, because through them you yourself look at me, revealing more than you think, I adore your blue eyes."
"What are you thinking?" demanded Lily.
"Of a man who lay face downward far out in the desert, and had not a drop of water to moisten his lips."
"Is he in your story?"
"Yes, he is in my story."
"I thought perhaps you didn't want me to come here any more," she said.
"You didn't think so!" flashed Maurice.
"But you turned your cheek to me the last time I was here. You were too busy to do more than speak."
Voicelessly he said: "I lay under your feet, my life, my love! You walked on me and never knew it." Aloud he answered: "Was I so detestable? Forgive me. I am trying to learn self-control."
"You are all self-control! If you have feeling, you manage very well to conceal it."
"God grant it!" he said, in silence, behind his lips. "For the touch of your hand is rapture. My God! how hard it is to love so much and be still!" Aloud he said, "Don't you know the great mass of human beings are obliged to conceal their feelings because they have not the gift of expression?"
"Yes, I know," answered Lily, defiantly.
"But that can never be said of you," Maurice went on. "For you are so richly endowed with expression that your problem is how to mask it."
"Are you coming down the trail with me? It is sunset, and time to shut the study for the day."
He prepared at once to leave his den, and they went out together on the trail, lingering step by step. Though it was the heart of the island summer, the maples still had tender pink leaves at the extremities of branches; and the trail looked wild and fresh as if that hour tunnelled through the wilderness. Sunset tried to penetrate western stretches with level shafts, but none reached the darkening path where twilight already purpled the hollows.
The night coolness was like respite after burning pain. Maurice wondered how close he might draw this changeful girl to him without again losing her. He had compared her to a wild sweetbrier-rose. She was a hundred-leaved rose, hiding innumerable natures in her depths.
They passed the dead pines, crossed the rotten log, and came silently within sight of the Indian on the trail, but neither of them noted it. The Indian stood stencilled against a background of primrose light, his bow magnified.
It was here that Maurice felt the slight elastic body sag upon his arm.
"I am tired," said Lily. "I have been working so hard to amuse your friends!"
"Would that I were my friends!" responded Maurice. He said, silently: "I love you! I wonder if I shall ever learn to love you less?"
The unspoken appeal of her swaying figure put him off his guard, and he found himself holding her, the very depths of his passion rushing out with the force of lava.
"It is you I want!--the you that is not any other person on earth or in the universe! Whatever it is--the identity--the spirit--that is you--the you that was mated with me in other lives--that I have sought--will seek--must have, whatever the price in time and anguish!--understand!--there is nobody but you!"
Tears oozed from under her closed lids. She lay in his arms passive, as in a half-swoon.
"You do the talking," she breathed. "I do the loving!"
Without opening her eyes she met him with her perfect mouth, and gave herself to him in a kiss. He understood a spirit so passionately reticent that it denied to itself its own inward motions. The wilfulness of a solitary exalted nature melted in that kiss. All the soft curves of her face concealed and belied the woman who opened "her wild blue eyes and looked at him, passionately adoring, fierce for her own, yet doubtful of fate.
"If I let you know that I loved you all I do, you would tire of me!"
"How can you say I could ever tire of you?"
"I know it! When you are not quite sure of me, you love me best!"
Maurice laughed against her lips. "You said that was the Indian on the trail--my never being quite sure of you! Will you take an oath with me?"
"Yes."
"This is the oath: I swear before God that I love you more than any one else on earth; more than any one else in the universe."
She repeated: "I swear before God that I love you more than any one else on earth; more than any one else in the universe!"
Maurice held her blond head against his breast, quivering through flesh and spirit. That was