The Master-Knot of Human Fate | Page 8

want to ask you,
but I have not dared."
He looked up with such a hurt expression that she went on quickly,
"Not that; I mean I couldn't. I have been afraid to put things in words.
They grow so much more real then. But now I am afraid to keep my
thoughts longer."
They went past the wheat and corn fields, through a narrow cañon that
led them to a valley they had never seen before. It was very beautiful,
and the play of the sunlight on the high walls of rock, the murmur of
the stream below them, the trembling aspens, the white peaks in the
distance, made a scene worthy their attention, but they were blind to it.
They sat down on a broad stone seat; presently Adam said, "Now, tell
me; tell me how it seems to you."
"No," she answered, "you must tell me. What has happened to us,
Adam? Where are we, and why were we left?"

"God knows," he said reverently.
"Do you think it possible," she said slowly, "that we are dead?"
"Oh, I don't know!" he broke out, with a return to something of his old
childlike impatience. "Sometimes I think it is all a dream, and directly I
shall wake up and find myself in my dingy old law office. But you are
not a dream. These mountains are not a dream. Lassie barking down
below there is not a dream; and these callous spots on my hands are
real enough in all conscience, and no dream could last so long.
Sometimes I think we have been hypnotized and carried off and left on
an island somewhere. Sometimes--do you remember the man who
computed the vast number of 'mysterious disappearances,' and formed a
theory that the earth was being sorted out before the opening of the last
vial, or some such stuff? Do you think we can be simply another
disappearance?"
"I don't know," she said. "It seems easier to believe that, easier to
believe anything than that the whole world has disappeared."
"Then I think sometimes," he went on, "that there are evil powers,--I
know this sounds as if I had lost my mind, and maybe I have, I'm not
sure of anything,--but it seems as if there might be an explanation if we
believed in genii who have power over us. Perhaps you and I, who so
often found fault with the poor old earth, are being punished by
banishment from it. Perhaps we are being prepared for some great work.
I haven't very much religion, and yet I suppose I do believe in a divine
purpose back of things, a directing power that wastes nothing. I have
tried to think why this thing should come upon us, you and me, of all
the world; and while it seems an evil thing, a terrible and
overwhelming disaster, when I realize that it might have befallen me
alone, then just the fact that you are here makes it seem almost good.
Do you understand?"
"Yes," she said quickly. "I have felt just so. When, at first, I felt as if I
should curse God and die, I had only to remember you to fall on my
knees for thankfulness. Even if a dozen other people had been left
instead, no one would have understood as you have. Oh, I would

infinitely rather be alone with you than in the utter loneliness of the
society of a lot of men and women who would drive me mad with their
complaints and inefficiency. I don't know whether it is a dream, or
heaven or hell, or the work of some black magic; I only know that if it
is a punishment it has been commuted, in that you share it. And yet
how selfish that sounds, as selfish as love itself. I ought to wish you
were in a better, happier place, where you could carry out your
ambitions--" She stopped, and her eyes filled.
"Don't mind," he said grimly. "If that is selfishness, I am selfish to the
core. I have gone over the whole list, and I don't know any one I would
rather sacrifice to companionship with me in this exile than you. My
parents were old; they could never have borne the shock. My sisters
would be unhappy without their families; my women friends could
none of them have met the exigencies of such an existence as you have;
and as for men, by this we would all have been barbarians together.
You have kept me sane and alive, for that matter."
"But are we sane?" she said slowly, "I think I could stand it if I only
knew we were sane and alive. It is the feeling that I don't know
anything, that this valley, these mountains, may