Page:Century Magazine v069 (centuryillustrat69holl).pdf/454
space to meet him. The Scientist sprang up and held out both hands. But she put her own behind her, and laughed up to him archly. He had known that she would laugh like that. He had always known it. Stupid! stupid! He was gazing down at her with all his soul in his eyes. She was very beautiful, laughing there—more beautiful than any moth. He suddenly felt for his glasses to rub them. But he had no glasses. Ah, it was truly another world, and he could see far into the clear eyes, deep—deep.
"Come," she said. She was holding out her hand,—the small brown hand,—and he covered it with his own, and they wandered through the forest, sometimes swiftly, along cleared spaces, as if wings bore them, and sometimes slowly, looking from side to side and looking long at each other. Once she stopped and leaned over a bush with hushed breath. "Look!" she said. In the curve of a branch a Scarberus rested, his wings opening and closing in softest rhythm. The Scientist raised a hand, but she caught it to her side, and drew him away. Her eyes laughed at him, but she shook her head slowly. "There are hundreds, but you must not touch them—not one of them. They come out only at night."
"At night?" He leaned forward eagerly. "Do you know? How do you know?"
She was drawing him away from the bush, still farther away.
"Oh, it is easy." She laughed and lifted her face. "Listen!"
The wind surged above them in the pines, and night-sounds broke upon it and touched it and swept away beneath it. Her eyes were alight and her lips trembled. He bent nearer to them—nearer, and put out his hands in darkness, and fell through space,—long depths of space,—and rested at last upon darkness—solid banks of it that stretched beneath him and reached away on each side. And when he woke there was only the wish in his heart. He would stay another day.
All this was very reprehensible from the point of view of science, and a trifle absurd, but very broadening. The pursuit of bugs and moths, while it may call one's attention to beauties of structure and rouse one's admiration for the marvels of anatomy, does not tend to a belief in spiritism or telepathy or second sight or elective affinities. And the Scientist, who was not stupid, but only very ignorant, grew rapidly wise. The halo of degrees about his head dwindled in his eyes to the smallest-sized type known to civilized man, and the joy in his heart sang so loud that he was half ashamed, and tried to pretend to himself that it was the altitude.
And then, one morning, she came back. She appeared at the breakfast-table with radiant eyes and clear, dark skin, looking just as she had looked when he parted from her, at sunrise, not two hours before. The Scientist held out his hand to her boldly; it did not occur to him to take off his glasses and rub them; and she smiled back at him frankly.
Mrs. Tryon and Ethelberta drew a sigh of relief. Henrietta was a trifle difficult at times, and it would have been too bad to break up the sense of good-fellowship that had come to pass among them.
After breakfast the Scientist was closeted with Mrs. Tryon in the library for half an hour, and when he came out she went straight to Henrietta's room. The girl stood by the wool-lined basket, taking out her pets and arranging them in place.
Her mother came in and closed the door carefully behind her.
"He's done it," she said, seating herself in a chair by the window, and beaming at Henrietta.
"Done what?" asked Henrietta. She lifted the yellow cat and placed it carefully on the table. The yellow head waggled comfortably from side to side.
Her mother nodded to her sagely. "Of course I expected it; but he's not just like other men, and I was n't sure he—cared."
Henrietta lifted her hand to her forehead, looking at her mother with clear, transparent eyes. "Has he told you?" she said wonderingly.
"Just this minute. And I 've given him my blessing. They are just suited to each other."
The girl's hand dropped slowly. "They—are—" She was staring into her mother's face.
Her mother laughed good-humoredly. "You have n't seen it; you 've been away so much. But they have a hundred things in common, books and their music, and they 're both so slow and restful—not like you and me." She rose and patted the girl's cheek, "I wanted you to know right