She looked down and paled. "Are you going away, major?"
"Yes." Then said I, looking at her, "How far do you think pity could lead one, Vesty--you, so pitiful and kind? Do you think that it could even lead you--to marry me? To take little Gurd and go away with me--and help me to live--for pity?"
"Then," said I, grasping hard on my cane with my feeble hand, "as God wills!"
"Because," said Vesty, "I'm not so unselfish as that. I can't marry you for that reason--because--I love you!"
The red of the Basin sunset, that would be by and by unsurpassed, glowed in her cheeks.
As for me--forever a Basin--I dashed my hand across my eyes. A Voice above land and sea rolled toward me in that moment, through her voice, in gathering waves that covered all the pitiful accident and despair of a maimed, halting, birth-marked universe:
"And the crooked places shall be made straight; and the rough places plain. Then shall the lame man leap as an hart."
Waves, slowly, softly breaking, not on the Basin shore: though ever, in remotest lands, we dream of that.
We hold it mystic more and more, for love of it!--ay, we have it mingled in our thoughts with that one safe and sweet possession, the Land unspoken, the Basin whose colors dawn at eventide!
And we never count: "Such an one was lost," and, "Such an one was living, when we knew." For there, there are none lost. They live again!
I suggested once that we should build a house fitting those grand sea-cliffs, sometimes to occupy it.
But Vesty, ever wise, was silent, troubled, and I read her thought.
No, we should introduce no discordant element there, of liveries and servants, and riches and seclusive walls, of _mine_ and _thine_.
"Mine _is_ thine if thou needest it," was ever the Basin code: "even my life!" Before such a spirit the admission of worldly wealth and rank were tawdry.
But Vesty communicates with them (dear to me when they arrive are the stamps unutterably erased by Lunette's faithful art): and we know that they are happier for us, and by us comforted.
And do I never blush for Vesty in her new position? Ay, a thousand times, for pride and joy! Her manners are from a high source indeed; you will not find me any that are higher.
Full are her hands of charity and mercy, given, as the great Founder of our nobilities gave, without stooping, of condescension. Saint Vesta! who gives a glory to my name it never had before--the high and noble lady of my house!