I awoke with the consciousness of a new joy,suddenly to identify it with Nancy.She was mine!I kept repeating it as I dressed;summoning her,not as she had lain in my arms in the darkness--though the intoxicating sweetness of that pervaded me--but as she had been before the completeness of her surrender,dainty,surrounded by things expressing an elusive,uniquely feminine personality.I could afford to smile at the weather,at the obsidian sky,at the rain still falling persistently;and yet,as I ate my breakfast,I felt a certain impatience to verify what Iknew was a certainty,and hurried to the telephone booth.I resented the instrument,its possibilities of betrayal,her voice sounded so matter-of-fact as she bade me good morning and deplored the rain.
"I'll be out as soon as I can get away,"I said."I have a meeting at three,but it should be over at four."And then I added irresistibly:
"Nancy,you're not sorry?You--you still--?""Yes,don't be foolish,"I heard her reply,and this time the telephone did not completely disguise the note for which I strained.I said something more,but the circuit was closed....
I shall not attempt to recount the details of our intercourse during the week that followed.There were moments of stress and strain when it seemed to me that we could not wait,moments that strengthened Nancy's resolution to leave immediately for the East:there were other,calmer periods when the wisdom of her going appealed to me,since our ultimate union would be hastened thereby.We overcame by degrees the distastefulness of the discussion of ways and means....We spent an unforgettable Sunday among the distant high hills,beside a little lake of our own discovery,its glinting waters sapphire and chrysoprase.Agrassy wood road,at the inviting entrance to which we left the automobile,led down through an undergrowth of laurel to a pebbly shore,and there we lunched;there we lingered through the long summer afternoon,Nancy with her back against a tree,I with my head in her lap gazing up at filmy clouds drifting imperceptibly across the sky,listening to the droning notes of the bees,notes that sometimes rose in a sharp crescendo,and again were suddenly hushed.The smell of the wood-mould mingled with the fainter scents of wild flowers.She had brought along a volume by a modern poet:the verses,as Nancy read them,moved me,--they were filled with a new faith to which my being responded,the faith of the forth-farer;not the faith of the anchor,but of the sail.I repeated some of the lines as indications of a creed to which Ihad long been trying to convert her,though lacking the expression.She had let the book fall on the grass.I remember how she smiled down at me with the wisdom of the ages in her eyes,seeking my hand with a gesture that was almost maternal.
"You and the poets,"she said,"you never grow up.I suppose that's the reason why we love you--and these wonderful visions of freedom you have.
Anyway,it's nice to dream,to recreate the world as one would like to have it.""But that's what you and I are doing,"I insisted.
"We think we're doing it--or rather you think so,"she replied."And sometimes,I admit that you almost persuade me to think so.Never quite.
What disturbs me,"she continued,"is to find you and the poets founding your new freedom on new justifications,discarding the old law only to make a new one,--as though we could ever get away from necessities,escape from disagreeable things,except in dreams.And then,this delusion of believing that we are masters of our own destiny--"She paused and pressed my fingers.
"There you go-back to predestination!"I exclaimed.
"I don't go back to anything,or forward to anything,"she exclaimed.
"Women are elemental,but I don't expect you to understand it.Laws and codes are foreign to us,philosophies and dreams may dazzle us for the moment,but what we feel underneath and what we yield to are the primal forces,the great necessities;when we refuse joys it's because we know these forces by a sort of instinct,when we're overcome it's with a full knowledge that there's a price.You've talked a great deal,Hugh,about carving out our future.I listened to you,but I resisted you.It wasn't the morality that was taught me as a child that made me resist,it was something deeper than that,more fundamental,something I feel but can't yet perceive,and yet shall perceive some day.It isn't that I'm clinging to the hard and fast rules because I fail to see any others,it isn't that I believe that all people should stick together whether they are happily married or not,but--I must say it even now--I have a feeling I can't define that divorce isn't for us.I'm not talking about right and wrong in the ordinary sense--it's just what I feel.I've ceased to think.""Nancy!"I reproached her.
"I can't help it--I don't want to be morbid.Do you remember my asking you about God?--the first day this began?and whether you had a god?
Well,that's the trouble with us all to-day,we haven't any God,we're wanderers,drifters.And now it's just life that's got hold of us,my dear,and swept us away together.That's our justification--if we needed one--it's been too strong for us."She leaned back against the tree and closed her eyes."We're like chips in the torrent of it,Hugh."....
It was not until the shadow of the forest had crept far across the lake and the darkening waters were still that we rose reluctantly to put the dishes in the tea basket and start on our homeward journey.The tawny fires of the sunset were dying down behind us,the mist stealing,ghostlike,into the valleys below;in the sky a little moon curled like a freshly cut silver shaving,that presently turned to gold,the white star above it to fire.
