"Chrissie," he said suddenly, "if afterwards--there should be anybody--else. I mean for us. Would--would you keep on lovin' this little kiddie, too?"
"Well, you Silly," she said, "of course I would!"
At which Allen laughed joyously, confidently.
"Why, Chris," he cried, "we're married! For always an' always. An' here's this little old man to see to. Who's afraid?"
Then they kissed each other above the head of the sleeping child, and drove on toward the village, and toward their waiting house.
When I opened my door this morning, the Outdoors was like a thing coming to meet me. I mean that it was like a person coming to meet me--no, it was like many persons, hand in hand and, so to speak, mind in mind; a great company of whom straightway I became one. I felt that swift, good gladness that _now_ was _now_,--that delicate, fleeting Now, that very coquette of time, given and withdrawn. I remember that I could not soon go to sleep on the night of the day on which I learned that the Hebrew tongue has no present tense. They could not catch at that needle-point of experience, and we can do so. I like to glory in it by myself when no one else is thinking of it; to think aside, as if _to_ Something, that now is being now.... And I long for the time when we shall all know it together, all the time, and understand its potentialities and let it be breath and pulse to keep the Spirit Future alive and pure.
It would have been no great wonder if I had been rejoicing past all reason in the moment. For at that very instant came Calliope Marsh, home for the Java entertainment which was set for to-night, and driving to my gate the Sykes's white horse in the post-office store delivery wagon. And as I saw her, so precisely did she look like herself, that I could have believed that Now was not Now, but Then, when first I knew her.
Calliope brought the buckled lines informally over the horse's head and let them fall about the tie post, and ran to me. I am afraid that I am not going to tell what we said. But it was full of being once more in the presence of those whom you love. Do you not think that such being together is a means of actual life transcending both breath and perception?
When our greeting was done, Calliope sat down on the stair in my hall, and,