"This story is plainly impossible. This practical girl was not one to find pleasure in listening to flattery. Let us read no more in this book." This is what some wise people will say at this point. So, to their loss will they close the book. They have not achieved all knowledge. The wisest woman would rather hear of her eyes than of her mind. There are those who say the reverse, but then perhaps no one has ever had cause to tell them concerning what lies hid in their eyes.
Many had wished to tell Winsome these things, but to no one hitherto had been given the discoverer's soul, the poet's voice, the wizard's hand to bring the answering love out of the deep sea of divine possibilities in which the tides ran high and never a lighthouse told of danger.
"Tell me more," said Winsome, being a woman, as well as fair and young. These last are not necessary; to desire to be told about one's eyes, it is enough to be a woman.
Ralph looked down. In such cases it is necessary to refresh the imagination constantly with the facts. As in the latter days wise youths read messages from the quivering needle of the talking machine, so Ralph read his message flash by flash as it pulsated upward from a pure woman's soul.
"Once you would not tell me why your eyelashes were curled up at the ends," said this eager Columbus of a new continent, drawing the new world nearer his heart in order that his discoveries might be truer, surer, in detail more trustworthy. "I know now without telling. Would you like to know, Winsome?"
Winsome drew a happy breath, nestling a little closer--so little that no one but Ralph would have known. But the little shook him to the depths of his soul. This it is to be young and for the first time mastering the geography of an unknown and untraversed continent. The unversed might have thought that light breath a sigh, but no lover could have made the mistake. It is only in books, wordy and unreal, that lovers misunderstand each other in that way.
"I know," said Ralph, needing no word of permission to proceed, "it is with touching your cheek when you sleep."
"Then I must sleep a very long time!" said Winsome merrily, making light of his words.
"Underneath in the dark of either eye," continued Ralph, who, be it not forgotten, was a poet, "I see two young things like cherubs."
"I know," said Winsome; "I see myself in your eyes--you see yourself in mine."
She paused to note the effect of this tremendous discovery.