The Indian on the Trail | Page 5

can see with my eyelashes. Do you know, I have often thought I
should love her if I were a man!"
There was not a trace of jealousy in Lily's gentle and perfect manner.
"You resemble her," said Maurice. "You have the blond head, and the
same features--only a little more delicate."
"I have been in her parlor all morning," said Lily. "We talked about you.
I am certain, Maurice, Mrs. Carstang is in her heart still faithful to
you."
That she should thrust the old love on him as a kind of solace seemed
the cruelest of all. There was no cognizance of anything except this one
maddening girl. She absorbed him. She wrung the strength of his
manhood from him as tribute, such tribute as everybody paid her, even
Mrs. Carstang. He sat like a rock, tranced by the strong control which
he kept over himself.
"I must go,"-said Lily. She had not sat down at all. Maurice shuffled his
papers.
"Good-bye," she spoke.
"Good-bye," he answered.

She did not ask, "Are you coming down the trail with me?" but ebbed
softly away, the swish of her silken petticoat subsiding on the grassy
avenue.
Her lover stretched his arms across the desk and sobbed upon them
with heart-broken gasps.
"It is killing me! It is killing me! And there is no escape. If I took my
life my disembodied ghost would follow her, less able to make itself
felt than now! I cannot live without her, and she is not for me--not for
me!"
He cursed the necessity which drove him out with the sailing party, and
the prodigal waste of life on neutral, trivial doings which cannot be
called living. He could see Lily with every pore of his body, and grew
faint keeping down a wild beast in him which desired to toss overboard
the men who crowded around her. She was more deliciously droll than
any comédienne, full of music and wit, the kind of spirit that rises
flood-tide with occasion. He was himself hilarious also during this
experience of sailing with two queens surrounded by courtiers and
playing the deep game of fascination, as if men were created for the
amusement of their lighter moments. Lily's defiant, inscrutable eyes
mocked him. But Mrs. Carstang gave him sweet friendship, and he sat
by her with the unchanging loyalty of a devotee to an altar from which
the sacrament has been removed.
Next morning Lily did not come to the lime-kiln. Maurice worked
furiously all day, and corrected proof in his room at night, though
tableaux were shown in the casino, both Mrs. Carstang and Lily being
head and front of the undertaking.
The second day Lily did not come to the limekiln. But he saw her pass
along the grassy avenue in front of his study with Mrs. Carstang, a man
on each side of them. They waved their hands to him.
Maurice sat with his head on his desk all the afternoon, beaten and
broken-hearted. He told himself he was a poltroon; that he was losing
his manhood; that the one he loved despised him, and did well to

despise him; that a man of his age who gave way to such weakness
must be entering senility. The habit of rectitude would cover him like
armor, and proclaim him still of a chivalry to which he felt recreant.
But it came upon him like revelation that many a man had died of what
doctors had called disease, when the report to the health-officer should
have read: "This man loved a woman with a great passion, and she slew
him."
The sigh of the woods around, and the sunlight searching for him
through his door, were lonelier than illimitable space. It was what the
natives call a "real Mackinac day," with infinite splendor of sky and
water.
Maurice heard the rustle of woman's clothes, and stood up as Lily came
through the white waste of stones. She stopped and gazed at him with
large hunted eyes, and submitted to his taking and kissing her hands. It
was so blessed to have her at all that half his trouble fled before her.
They sat down together on the bench.
Much of his life Maurice had been in the attitude of judging whether
other people pleased him or not. Lily reversed this habit of mind, and
made him humbly solicitous to know whether he pleased her or not. He
silently thanked God for the mere privilege of having her near him.
Passionate selfishness was chastened out of him. One can say much
behind the lips and make no sound at all.
"If I drench her with my love and she does not know it," thought
Maurice, "it cannot annoy her. Let me take what she is willing to give,