"Child, child," said Willett, taking her free hand in both of his, "you speak a silent language with your eyes that no man can fail to understand."
"I failed," I said bitterly, as Willett kissed her hand, placed it in mine, and, turning, entered the open door.
"And what blame, Carus?" she whispered. "What have I been to you but a symbol of unbridled selfishness, asking all, giving nothing? How could you know I loved you so dearly that I could stand aside to let you pass? First I loved you selfishly, shamelessly; then I begged your guilty love, offering mine in the passion of my ignorance and bewilderment."
Her arm fell from my shoulder and nestled in mine, and we turned away together under the brilliant autumn glory of the trees.
"That storm that tore me--ah, Carus--I had been wrecked without your strong arm to bear me up!"
"It was you who bore me up, Elsin. How can I leave you now!"
"Why, Carus, our honor is involved."
"Our honor!"
"Yes, dear, ours."
"You--you bid me go, Elsin?"
"If I bid you stay, what would avail except to prove me faithless to you? How could I truly love you and counsel dishonor?"
White as a flower, the fixed smile never left her lips, nor did her steady pace beside me falter, or knee tremble, or a finger quiver of the little hand that lay within my own.
And then we fell silent, walking to and fro under the painted maple-trees in Johnstown streets, seeing no one, heeding no one, until the bell at the fort struck the hour. It meant the end.
We kissed each other once. I could not speak. My horse, led by Jack Mount, appeared from the tavern stables; and we walked back to the inn together.
Once more I took her in my arms; then she gently drew away and entered the open door, hands outstretched as though blinded, feeling her way--that was the last I saw of her, feeling her dark way alone into the house.
Senses swimming, dumb, deafened by the raging, beating pulses hammering in my brain, I reeled at a gallop into the sunny street, north, then west, then north once more, tearing out into the Butlersbury road. A gate halted me; I dismounted and dragged it open, then to horse again, then another gate, then on again, hailed and halted by riflemen at the cross-roads, which necessitated the summoning of my wits at last before they would let me go.
Now riding through the grassy cart-road, my shoulders swept by the fringing willows, I came at length to the Danascara, shining in the sunlight, and followed its banks--the same banks from which so often in happier days I had fished. At times I traveled the Tribes Hill road, at times used shorter cuts, knowing every forest-trail as I did, and presently entered the wood-road that leads from Caughnawaga church to Johnstown. I was in Butlersbury; there was the slope, there the Tribes Hill trail, there the stony road leading to that accursed house from which the Butlers, father and son, some five years since, had gone forth to eternal infamy.