This relying upon Margaret's judgment had become a habit with Oliver. He not only consulted her about his canvases, but about everything else that concerned him. He had never formulated in his mind what this kind of companionship meant to him (we never do when we are in the midst of it), nor had he ever considered what would become of him when the summer was over, and the dream would end, and they each would return to the customary dulness of life; a life where there would be no blue ether nor clouds, nor vanishing points, nor values, nor tones, nor anything else that had made their heaven of a summer so happy.
They had both lived in this paradise for weeks without once bringing themselves to believe it could ever end (why do not such episodes last forever?) when Oliver awoke one morning to the fact that the fatal day of their separation would be upon him in a week's time or less. Margaret, with her more practical mind, had seen farther ahead than Oliver, and her laugh, in consequence, had been less spontaneous of late, and her interest in her work and in Oliver's less intense. She was overpowered by another sensation; she had been thinking of the day, now so near, when the old stage would drive up to Mrs. Taft's pasture-gate, and her small trunk and trap would be carried down on Hank's back and tumbled in, and she would go back alone to duty and the prosaic life of a New England village.
Neither of them supposed that it was anything else but the grief of parting that afflicted them, until there came a memorable autumn night--a night that sometimes comes to the blessed!--when the moon swam in the wide sky, breasting the soft white clouds, and when Oliver and Margaret sat together on the porch of Mrs. Taft's cottage--he on the steps at her feet, she leaning against the railing, the moonlight full upon her face.
They had been there since sunset. They had known all day what was in each other's mind, but they had avoided discussing it. Now they must face it.
"You go to-morrow, Madge?" Oliver asked. He knew she did. He spoke as if announcing a fact.
"Yes."
The shrill cry of a loon, like the cry of a child in pain, sifted down the ravine from the lake above and died away among the pines soughing in the night-wind. Oliver paused for a moment to listen, and went on:
"I don't want you to go. I don't know what I am going to do without you, Madge," he said with a long indrawn sigh.
"You are coming to us at Brookfield, you know, on your way back to New York. That is some thing." She glanced at him with a slightly anxious look in her eyes, as if waiting for his answer to reassure her.
He rose from his seat and began pacing the gravel.
Now and then he would stop, flick a pebble from its bed with his foot, and walk on. She heard the sound of his steps, but she did not look at him, even when he stopped abruptly in front of her.
"Yes, I know, but--that will only make it worse."
He was leaning over her now, one foot on the steps.
"It tears me all to pieces when I think this is our last night. We've had such a good time all summer.
You don't want to go home, do you?"
"No--I'd rather stay." The words came slowly, as if it gave her pain to utter them.
"Well--stay, then," he answered with some animation.
"What difference does a few days makes?
Let us have another week. We haven't been over to Bog Eddy yet; please stay, Madge."
"No, I must go, Ollie."
"But we'll be so happy, little girl."
"Life is not only being happy, Ollie. It's very real sometimes. It is to me--" and a faint sigh escaped her.
"Well, but why make it real to-morrow? Let us make it real next week, not now."
"It would be just as hard for you next week.
Why postpone it?" She was looking at him now, watching his face closely.
Her answer seemed to hurt him. With an impatient gesture he straightened himself, turned as if to resume his walk, and then, pushing away the end of her skirt, sat down beside her.
"I don't understand your theories, Madge, and I'm not going to discuss them. I don't want to talk of any such things; I'm too unhappy to-night. When I look ahead and think that if the Academy should not open, you wouldn't come back at all, and that I might not see you for months, I'm all broken up. What am I going to do without you, Madge?"
His voice was quivering, and a note of pain ran through it.
"Oh, you will have your work--you'll do just what you did before I came up." She was holding herself in by main strength; why, she could not tell --fighting an almost irresistible impulse to hide her face on his breast and cry.
"What good will that do me when you are gone?" he burst out, with a quick toss of his head and a certain bitterness in his tone.
"Well, but you were very happy before you saw me."
Again the cry of the loon came down the ravine.
He turned and with one of his quick, impatient gestures that she knew so well, put his hand on her shoulder.
"Stop, Madge, stop! Don't talk that way. I can't stand it. Look at me!" The pain had become unbearable now. "You've got to listen. I can't keep it back, and I won't. I never met anybody that I loved as I do you. I didn't think so at first. I never thought I could think so, but it's true.
You are not my sweetheart nor my friend, nor my companion, nor anything else that ever came into my life. You are my very breath, my soul, my being.
I never want you to leave me. I should never have another happy day if I thought this was to end our life. I laid awake half the night trying to straighten it out, and I can't, and there's no straightening it out and never will be unless you love me.
Oh, Madge! Madge! Don't turn away from me.
Let me be part of you--part of everything you do --and are--and will be."
He caught her hand in his warm palm and laid his cheek upon it. Still holding it fast he raised his head, laid his other hand upon her hair, smoothing it softly, and looked long and earnestly into her eyes as if searching for something hidden in their depths. Then, in a voice of infinite tenderness, he said:
"Madge, darling! Tell me true--could you ever love me?"
She sat still, her eyes fixed on his, her hand nestling in his grasp. Then slowly and carefully, one at a time, she loosened with her other hand the fingers that lay upon her hair, held them for an instant in her own, bent her head and touched them with her lips.
