IV

“All day I’ve thought of you, Adraste,” said Damastor. “You run in my head like a tune; whatever less lovely goes on round about me, I can always be silent and listen.”

“I like to hear you say so, Damastor. How wonderful you are, with a pretty speech every time we meet, and never twice the same! To me you are a picture, not music; I dream of you—dreams so lively, I almost fear the household will see what I see, and know my secret.”

“What do you see, Adraste?”

“Do you ask, my lover? … Damastor, your lips are cold! Poor boy!”

“Come farther into the shadow, Adraste—they will see us if we walk in the moonlight. I never saw such a great moon. Here, we can sit on this garden bench, and talk in peace.”

“There never was such a moon, Damastor, but the brightness is you, I think; I have come here alone, on nights like this, to see the garden turned to magic, and to think of—what we think of; but it was never so bright. If I could, I’d have it brighter still, and everybody here to see us walking in it. Our happiness is too beautiful to hide. I’m so proud of you, Damastor … Damastor, do you love me—as you said?”

“I love you more, Adraste, oh, so much more! Don’t you feel it, how much I love you? Do we need words?”

“I like you to tell me, Damastor; nobody could tell it as you can. When you first told me you loved me, I shall never forget how you told me!”

“Adraste, I don’t recall a single word. What I remember is the silence afterwards. I was so afraid there might be some one else you cared for already, and you managed to let me know there was some one and just as I felt ready to die, I found out I was the one, after all.”

“Yes, you found out! But I had to tell you.”

“You had to tell me! I like that. We just looked at each other and said nothing. I never was so happy in my life: I shall never be so happy again.”

“Oh, I shall, Damastor. I didn’t enjoy that silence a bit. I knew you cared, you innocent child, and I had to wait while you wrestled with the idea; and it wasn’t news to me, whatever it was to you, that you had my heart. Really I was annoyed at you, just standing there paralysed with your great discovery, and not knowing what to do next.”

“If I was struck dumb, Adraste, it was with happiness … And then I asked you for just one kiss, don’t you remember?”

“I do; that was the precise number you asked for.”

“But you let me take more than one, Adraste. I didn’t know what kisses were.”

“They frightened you a little, poor Damastor, didn’t they? You seemed to think there were only so many kisses in the world, and if we took them all that day, there would never be any others. We had better save them up a little, you said. We promised to wait a long, long time for each other.”

“How young it seems! We were both so young, Adraste!”

“Yes, is was several months ago. And now we are—what, dear lover?—middle-aged? At least so old that I grow retrospective, and sentimental, and I ask you to say again you love me, as you did when I was young.”

“I ought to be a poet, Adraste, to say—”

“But you are, dear lover!”

“Ah, no! If I were, I might put a heart-ache into words. It is a heart-ache, isn’t it! I wonder what brings it on—why happiness, I mean, should bring something so close to pain. I can’t lay hold of my love, Adraste—I can’t really touch you. My hand on your little fingers, on your soft cheeks, smooth and cool, all your softness in my arms—but you escape me, you whom I really love. Here in the shadow you are more real than sometimes when I see you in the broad day. Having you beside me, and listening to your voice, I can believe in the joy that surrounds me; sometimes in daylight I think it must be only a dream. I look at you and try to remember all that has happened, and I can’t believe it. But I can recall your appearance as it was long ago—in memory or in a dream the picture of our love is clear, but often the actual moment seems illusion. Is it that way with you, Adraste?”

“You are a poet, I always say, Damastor—you have so much imagination, and you play with your experiences, ask questions of them, try to find words for them. I’m a very simple person—I’m just in love with you, all of me in love. It is dream enough for me to see you, here in the shadow, or in the moonlight, or in sunlight. Just to see you, to be at your side, to feel you near!”

“Adraste, do you remember the first time we met—that is, to meet? When my mother asked me to go for the jar of water, and asked you to help me, and you came along so demurely?”

“Your mother wouldn’t ask me now to help you, would she! Do you remember that next time, when Helen brought me to your mother’s house, and your mother sent me to the other end of the garden, and so arranged it herself, without meaning to, that you came out and talked to me?”

“Do I remember! My mother will never be the same person again, we gave her such a shock. Adraste, she still thinks I hadn’t met you before; she insists she never asked you to help with the water-jar.”

“Well, even if we hadn’t met before, you might have come out.”

“Mother thinks not—she thinks you bewitched me, got me there by magic. In a way she’s right. But she oughtn’t to say she didn’t ask you to help, that other time.”

“She didn’t notice me, I suppose, Damastor—her mind was on the jar of water.”

“You mean, she didn’t notice how beautiful you were. When she saw that, the day in the garden, she was afraid of you.”

“Am I so terrible, Damastor?”

“Fatal, I should say.”

“It’s love that’s fatal, Damastor … Damastor, have you thought out any plan for us yet—what we’re to do?”

“I think of it all the time, Adraste, and the best thing still seems to wait a little longer, and keep our happiness, our happy secret, to ourselves. We couldn’t be happier than we have been, and are—could we? The responsibility is mine, and I think I can manage my parents best if I don’t break the news too suddenly; they’re both very stubborn over any unexpected news they don’t like. I can’t think what else to do.”

“Damastor, my dear lover, it’s a happy secret, as you say—but I can’t keep it much longer.”

“You mean—you mean—”

“Of course I mean! There, don’t be so frightened. I told you before, and now it’s dawning on you, as our love did—it is our love again, isn’t it! In a little while everyone will know. Why shouldn’t they? I’m happy and proud, Damastor; it’s altogether beautiful. But I wish it weren’t a secret! Why shouldn’t we go right out and say to any who will listen, Damastor and Adraste are given to each other, given by their love, forever? I don’t see what they could do, except envy us. Your mother wouldn’t like me at first—she loves you too much to care for any girl who takes you away—but in time I could make her like me. Your father would be kind to us.”

“Father would be kind, if he were alone,” said Damastor, “but mother would be harder to convert than you think. She didn’t like your beauty, to start with; she thinks that all beautiful women are probably bad, and if she knew what—what you just told me—she’d be sure her theory was sound. I’m sorry, Adraste, but it’s a fact. She wouldn’t understand. I keep hoping that if we wait there may be some way out. There’ll be none if I speak now.”

“Tell me this, Damastor—do you think I’m a bad woman? Are you sympathising at all with what you said would be your mother’s view? Do you regret our love together?”

“Oh, Adraste, how can you ask me that!”

“How can I, dear? Because you suggest the question. You don’t speak as you did when you wanted me first, when you said we’d face life together, when you were sure the only thing that mattered was that we should belong to each other. You weren’t so prudent then—at least, you weren’t so prudent for me, were you? I’m not saying I didn’t want to love you—I mean that you were your very noblest then, when you took me, took your whole life in your own hands, I thought, faced any risk at all, of poverty, even of your mother’s anger, in order that you might be yourself. Would you do it again, Damastor, if it were all still to be done?”

“Adraste, I love you so, what you say makes me feel a bit hurt, as though you were accusing me of unfaithfulness. Could I make it clearer to you than I have made it, how much I want you all to myself, our one life together? I can’t see how I’ve done anything to disappoint you.”

“In a way you have, Damastor, or I think you have; all I want is for you to prove me mistaken. I thought you knew your mind when you asked me to give myself—I thought you were giving yourself too. With such a man I could face anything. You can’t know how utterly I admired you, Damastor. I knew your mother didn’t like me, but we agreed we had the right to make our own choice and live our own lives. I imagined that you would go to her and simply say, with complete affection and respect, that you and I loved each other, that it was all settled; and you’d say it in some wonderfully wise words, so that your mother, even if she was sorry, would see it our way, or if she didn’t, you would have the comfort of your own frankness and sincerity. Damastor, I’m disappointed that you do nothing at all—just wait. It isn’t so brave nor so wise as I expected you to be, and at times I fear you are less sure of yourself than you were. Did I misjudge you, I ask? Or did you love me once, and have you changed?”

“How much I love you, Adraste, I’ll give my life to showing. If I’ve delayed, it isn’t because I’m a coward. It will take courage to face my mother, but when I’m sure it’s the right time I’ll speak to her. Have you told Helen?”

“Not a word.”

“Does she suspect?”

“Damastor, Helen seems to know everything of this sort that goes on around her, so I dare say she has guessed long ago, but she has said nothing to me, and of course I haven’t spoken to her.”

“If you feel that way toward Helen, you ought to understand why I too wish to keep it a secret for a while longer.”

“I don’t want to keep it a secret from anybody, Damastor, but I want you to tell it. I want you to boast of it, and be proud, so that I can be proud of you.”

“Aren’t you proud of me, Adraste?”

“Damastor, I dare say no man ever quite knows why a woman loves him; so far as I can judge from what you say, you entirely miss the things I love you for. I love the courage in you to know at sight what belongs to your nature, to your own destiny. Most people seem to be imitating each other, without considering whether anything they do is what they really want. You have what Helen often speaks of, you have the love of life; you naturally try to see things as they are, you hate subterfuge and hypocrisy, you would be frank with yourself and with others. That’s why I love you, Damastor—I could never love the opposite kind of man. You mustn’t lose your great gift, Damastor; if you should change, I couldn’t be proud of you—I should be fond of you always, but, oh, so sorry for you! It isn’t simply this one problem, you see—it’s your whole life that’s at stake, for if you begin now to hide your thoughts and your feelings, and to cringe before the opinions of other people, you’ll be lost forever—I’m sure of that, Damastor. It’s so simple, I thought you of all persons would see it clearly. If you have done what you now think was wrong, of course you ought to stop and do what you now think is right. That’s why I asked you whether you regretted our love. But if what we did is still right, as we believed it to be, there’s no reason on earth why we should hide it from anybody. If others don’t like what we are and what we do, of course we wish there were no such difference of opinion, but sooner or later we have to decide who’s controlling our lives—ourselves or those others. When I thought you and I were to make our own choices, I was proud of you, Damastor.”

“I don’t blame you for misjudging me, Adraste, but you do misjudge me. I have told you again and again that I would let no one, not even my parents, control my destiny. If I could go to them now, as you want me to, and tell them I’ve chosen you for my future wife, whether they like it or not, and if they would calmly submit, as you half hope they would, then I suppose you’d be convinced that I’m a forceful character. But if I tell my father this news, with mother so fixed in her prejudices, he’ll turn me out of the house—and where are we to go? I don’t see the heroism of that. Love of life—yes, but first of all we must live. Temporarily, at least, we are both better off than we’d be if my people sent me away and I had no shelter or protection to offer you.”

“Must one live, Damastor—is that the thing of first importance? How we live, I’d rather say. I think the love of life must have in it a kind of recklessness, a determination not to pay too high for mere existence—not to pay with your soul. My way would be to go hand in hand with you now, and tell them all about it. First we’d find Helen and tell her, then we’d go to your people; and if they disowned us, as you expect, then we’d literally walk down the road together till something happened to us—some good fortune or perhaps some bad. That would be the sincere and fine thing to do, I’m sure. Wouldn’t you, in your heart, be happy to do that with me? Damastor, will you do it now—this very hour?”

“What a mad idea, Adraste!—to go off that way, like tramps, with you—you couldn’t stand it; you’d die before we had gone far!”

“I shall die here. But I’d rather die that way, with the man I thought I gave myself to. Damastor, I know to-night that I have lost you!”

“I’ll never leave you, Adraste! To-night you are full of gloomy thoughts and fears, but there’s no reason for them, except that you aren’t quite yourself. You’ll wake up rested to-morrow, and remember what we have said, and all the grim things you said to me, and you’ll laugh at your worries. I shall always love you, Adraste; I love you absolutely. I’ll make you proud of me yet, when the right moment comes to speak, and you see at last that I was right … Don’t go—we have lost the hour talking of these stupid matters. I thought we were to be together, just to be happy, and here we’ve been arguing.”

“Will you walk to the house with me, Damastor, or would you prefer that I go back alone? Very probably, Helen will see us, or Menelaus, or Hermione.”