The Indian on the Trail | Page 6

and ask no more."
"The Carstangs are gone," said Lily.
"Yes; I bade them good-bye this morning before I came to the
lime-kiln."
"You don't say you regret their going."
"I never seek Mrs. Carstang."

He sat holding the girl's hands and never swerving a glance from her
face, which was weirdly pallid--the face of her spirit. He felt himself
enveloped and possessed by her, his will subject to her will. He said
within himself, voicelessly: "I love you. I love the firm chin, the wilful
lower lip, and the Cupid's bow of the upper lip. I love the oval of your
cheeks, the curve of your ears, the etched eyebrows, and all the little
curls on your temples. I love the proud nose and most beautiful
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