“I did not know that you ever came to these woods,” she said, glancing down at her gown, in visible embarrassment.
Suddenly the combination was translated to Hale, memory coupled with intuition—she wore either the gown in which he had seen her on the Venice quay that other September day, or else its counterpart. So she had not forgotten!
“May I walk back with you? I was coming to see you. But then perhaps you would prefer that Mrs. Atwood should come as chaperon; she drove past the house an hour ago in a fine red motor-car.”
“He has not forgotten,” said Jane Mostyn’s second self, of whom, lacking any other, she had made a confidant of late years; what she said, however, was, “We will not go home; I am tired of shade and the pent feeling of the lowlands; let us go back up to the hilltop in the open, where one may see, hear, and breathe broadly, openly. This morning when I was in the library, I thought I should suffocate if I did not get away from both the place and myself for a day at least.” Then, looking at Hale, he thought rather anxiously, she added quickly as if she must say the words at any cost, “As I could not change my body and travel backward to youth, I changed my clothes.”
“What is that you are gathering?” Hale asked, transferring the basket to his arm and touching the feathers lightly; “I’ve never seen it before, and yet it grows here in profusion.”
“Groundsel-tree,” she answered; “you might pass by week in and out and never notice it, for its flower has no beauty; for that it must wait until frost releases its seed wings. I love the dear, shy thing; it has blown from the lowlands, and it keeps one’s courage up.”
Something made Hale look full at her, and there were tears clinging to her lashes as if ready to fall and betray her, but at the same moment they came out upon the hilltop and stood looking at the world together.
“I wonder if _they_ had spent their lives up here instead of living in a valley of their own shadows, would everything have been different?” said Jane, yet perfectly unconscious that she had spoken.
John Hale held a branch of the winged seeds in his hand and looked from it again to her face. “If glory is given to a bush in autumn that is denied summer beauty, why may it not be so with people as well? Being under a spell we have spent the best part of the day in the valley, but now that we have seen the full light of the afternoon sun, we can never go down again, you and I. Jane, you must marry me now, to-day; not even the shadow of one more nightfall shall come between, and, moreover, you shall never go back to the black clothes that speak of the valley. Neither of us need wear that badge,—it has been discounted by thirty years’ service.” With a swift, passionate gesture he drew her to him so close that her breath came forcibly.