The stiller she stood, apparently wrapped in serious inward contemplation, the stiller he remained, as though the spell of her serene self-absorption consigned him to silence. Once he ventured, stealthily, to smack a mosquito, but at the echoing whack there was, in her slowly turned face, the calm surprise of a disturbed goddess; and he felt like saying “excuse me.”
“Do they bite you?” she asked, lifting her divine eyebrows a trifle.
“Bite me! Good heavens, don’t they bite you? But I don’t suppose they dare — —”
“What?”
“I didn’t mean ‘dare’ exactly,” he tried to explain, feeling his ears turning a fiery red, and wondering why on earth he should have made such a foolish remark.
“What did you mean?”
“N — nothing. I don’t know. I say things and — and sometimes,” he added in a burst of confidence, “they don’t seem to mean anything at all.” To himself he groaned through ground teeth: “What an ass I am. What on earth is the matter with me?”
She considered him in silence, candidly; and redder and redder grew his ears as he saw that she was quietly inspecting him from head to foot with an interest perfectly unembarrassed, innocently intent upon her inspection.
Then, having finished him down to his feet, she lifted her eyes, caught his, looked a moment straight into them, then sighed a little.
“Do you know,” she said, “I ought not to have come here again.”
“Why?” he asked, astonished.
“There’s no use in my telling you. There was no use in my coming. Oh, I realise that perfectly well now. And I think I’d better go — —”
She lingered a moment, glanced at the stream running gold in the afternoon light, then turned away, bidding him good-bye in a low voice.
“Are you g-going?” he blurted out, not knowing exactly what he was saying.
She moved on in silence. He looked after her. A perfectly illogical feeling of despair overwhelmed him.
“For Heaven’s sake, don’t go away!” he said.
She moved on a pace, another, more slowly, hesitated, halted, leisurely looked back over her shoulder.
“What did you say?” she asked.
“I said — I said — I said — —” but he began to stammer fearfully and could get no farther.
Perhaps she thought he was threatened with some kind of seizure; anyway, something about him apparently interested her enough to slowly retrace her steps.
“What is the matter, Mr. Sayre?” she asked.
“Why, that’s funny!” he said; “you know my name?”
“Yes, I know your name.”
“Could — would — should — might — —” he could get no farther.
“What?”
“M-might I — would it be — could you — —”
“Are you trying to ask me what is my name?”
“Yes,” he said; “did you think I was reciting a lesson in grammar?”
Suddenly the rare smile played delicately along the edges of her upcurled mouth.
“No,” she said, “I knew you were embarrassed. It wasn’t nice of me. But,” and her face grew grave, “there is no use in my telling you my name.”
“Why?”
“Because we shall not meet again.”
“Won’t you ever let me — give me a chance — because — you know, somehow — seeing you yesterday — and to-day — this way — —”
“Yes, I know what you mean.”
“Do you?”
“Yes. I came back, too,” she said seriously.
A strange, inexplicable tingling pervaded him.
“You came — came — —”
“Yes. I should not have done it, because I saw you perfectly plainly yesterday. But — somehow I hoped — somehow — —”
“What!”
“That there had been a mistake.”
“You thought you knew me?”
“Oh, no. I knew perfectly well I had never before seen you. That made no difference. It wasn’t that. But I thought — hoped — I had made a mistake. In fact,” she said, with a slight effort, “I was dishonest with myself. I knew all the time that it was useless. And as soon as I saw you with your cap off — —”
“W-what!” he faltered.
A slight blush, perfectly distinct in her creamy skin, grew, then waned.
“I am sorry,” she said. “Of course, you do not understand what I am saying; and I can not explain. . . . And I think I had — better — go.”
“Please don’t.”
“That is an added reason for my going.”
“What is?”
“Your saying ‘please don’t.’”
He looked at her, bewildered, and slowly passed his hand across his eyes.
“Somehow,” he said, “this is all like magic to me. Here in the wilderness I hear a stick crack — —”
“I meant you to hear it. I could have moved without a sound.”
“And, looking up, I see the most beautif — I see — you. Then I dream of you.”
“Did you?”
“Every moment — between mosquitoes! And then to-day I returned, hoping.”
She lost a trifle of her colour.
“Hoping — what?”
“T-t-to s-s-see you,” he stammered.
“I must go,” she said under her breath, almost hurriedly; “this must stop now!”
“Won’t you — can’t you — couldn’t I — —”
“No. No — no — no — Mr. Sayre.”
He said: “I’ve simply got to see you again. I know what I’m asking — saying — hoping — wishing — isn’t usual — conventional — advisable, b-b-but I can’t help it.”
Standing there facing him she slowly shook her head.
“There is no use,” she said. “It is perfectly horrid of me to have come back. I somehow was afraid — from the expression of your face yesterday — —”
“Afraid of what?”
She hesitated; then, lifting her grey eyes, fearlessly:
“Afraid that you might wish to see me again. . . . Because I felt the same way.”
“Do you mean,” he cried, “that I — that you — that we — Oh, Lord! I’m not eloquent, but every faltering, stuttering, stammering, fool of a word I do say means a million things — —”
“Oh, I know it, Mr. Sayre. I know it. I have no business here; I must not remain — —”
“If you go, you know I’ll do some absurd thing — like poking my head under water and holding it there, or walking backward off that ledge. Do you know — if you should suddenly go away now, and if that ended it — —”
“Ended — what?”
“You know,” he said.
She may have known, for she stood very still, with head lowered and downcast eyes. As for Sayre, what common sense he possessed had gone. The thrilling unreality of it all — the exquisite irrational, illogical intoxication of the moment — her beauty — the mystery of her — and of the still, sunlit woods, had made of them both, and the forest world around them, an enchanted dream which he was living, every breath a rapture, every heart-beat an excited summons from the occult.
“Mr. Sayre,” she said, with an effort, “I shall not tell you my name; but if you ever again should happen to think of me, think of my name as the name of the girl in that poem which I heard you reciting yesterday.”
“Amourette?”
“Yes. That was the name of the poem and of the girl. You may call me Amourette — when you are thinking of me alone by yourself.”
“Did you like that poem?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Because — I wrote it.”
“You!” She lost a little of her colour.
“Yes,” he said, “I wrote it — Amourette.”
“Then — then I had better go away as fast as I can,” she murmured.
With an enraptured smile verging perilously upon the infatuated, if not fatuous, he repeated her name aloud; and she looked at hi
m out of soft grey eyes that seemed at once fascinated and distressed.
“Please let me go,” she said.
He was not detaining her.
“Won’t you?” she asked, pitifully.
“No, I won’t,” said William Sayre, suddenly invaded by an instinct that he possessed authority in the matter. “We must talk this thing over.”
“Oh, but there isn’t any use — really, truly there isn’t! Won’t you believe me?”
“No,” he said as honestly as he could through the humming exaltation that sang in him until, to himself, he sounded like a beehive.
There was a fallen log all over moss behind her.
“We ought to be seated to properly consider this matter,” he said.
“I must not think of it! I must go instantly.”
When they were seated, and he had nearly twisted his head off trying to meet her downcast eyes, he resumed a normal and less parrot-like posture, and folded his arms portentously.
“To begin,” he said, “I came here fishing. I heard a stick crack — —”
She looked up.
“That was my fault. It was all my fault. I don’t know how I ever came to do it. I never did such a thing in my life. We merely heard that you and Mr. Langdon were in the woods — —”
“Who heard?”
“We. Never mind the others. I’ll say that I heard you were here. And — and I took my — my net and came to — to — —”
“To what?”
“To — investigate.”
“Investigate what? Me?”
“Y-yes. I can’t explain. But I came, honestly, naturally, unsuspiciously. And as soon as I saw you I was quite sure that you were not what — what certain people wanted, even if you were the author of Amourette — —”
“‘To begin,’ he said, ‘I came here fishing.’”
“I was not what you wanted?” he repeated, bewildered.
“I mean that — that you were not what — what they required — —”
“They? Who are they? And what, in Heaven’s name, did ‘they’ require?”
“I don’t want to tell you, Mr. Sayre. All I shall say is that I knew immediately that they didn’t want you, because you are not up to the University standard. And you won’t understand that. I ought to have gone quietly away. . . . I don’t know why I didn’t. I was so interested in listening to you recite, and in looking at you. I loved your poem, Amourette. . . . And two hours slipped by — —”
“You stood there in the bushes looking at me for two hours, and listening to my poem — and liking it?”
“Yes, I did. . . . I don’t know why. . . . And then, somehow, without any apparent reason, I wanted you to see me . . . without any apparent reason . . . and so I stepped on a dry stick. . . . And to-day I came back . . . without any apparent reason. . . . I don’t know what on earth has happened to make me — make me — forget — —”
“Forget what?”
“Everything — except — —”
“Except what?”
She looked up at him with clear grey eyes, a trifle daunted.
“Forget everything except that I — like you, Mr. Sayre.”
He said: “That is the sweetest and most fearless thing a woman ever said. I am absurdly happy over it.”
She waited, looking down at her linked fingers.
“And,” he said, “for the first time in all my life I have cared more for what a woman has said to me than I care for anything on earth.”
There was a good deal of the poet in William Sayre.
“Do you mean it?” she asked, tremulously.
“I mean more.”
“I — I think you had better not say — more.”
“Why?”
“Because of what I told you. There is no use in your — your finding me — interesting.”
“Are you married?” he asked, so guilelessly that she blushed and denied it with haste.
His head was spinning in a sea of pink clouds. Harps were playing somewhere; it may have been the breeze in the pines.
“Amourette,” he repeated in a sort of divine daze.
“I am — going,” she said, in a low voice.
“Do you desire to render me miserable for life?” he asked so seriously that at first she scarcely realised what he had said. Then blush and pallor came and went; she caught her breath, looked up at him, beseechingly.
“Everything is wrong,” she said in the ghost of a voice. “Things are hurrying me — trying to drive me headlong. I must go. Let me go, now.”
And she sat very still, and closed her eyes. A second later she opened them.
“Why did you come?” she asked almost fiercely. “There was no use in it! Why did you come into these woods for that foolish newspaper? By this time the Associated Press, the police, and the families of the men you are looking for have received letters from every one of the four missing young men, saying that they are perfectly well and happy and expect to return — after their honeymoons.”
Flushed, excited, beautiful in her animation, she faced the astounded young man who stared at her wildly through his eye-glasses.
After a while he managed to ask whether she wished him to believe that these four young men had each eloped with their soul mates.
She bit her lip. “To be accurate,” she said in a low voice, “somebody eloped with each one of them.”
“How? I don’t understand!”
“I don’t wish you to. . . . Good-bye.”
“You mean,” he demanded, incredulously, “that four girls ran away with these four big, hulking young men?”
“Practically.”
“That’s ridiculous! Besides, it’s impossible! Besides — women don’t run men off like cattle rustlers. Man is the active agent in elopements, woman the passive agent.”
She did not answer.
“Isn’t she?”
She made no reply.
He said: “Amourette, shall I illustrate what I mean — with you as the passive agent?”
The girl bent over a little, then with a sudden movement she dropped her head in her hands. A moment later he saw a single tear fall between her fingers.
He looked east, west, north, south, and finally up into the sky. Seeing nobody, the silly expression left his otherwise interesting face; a graver, gentler light grew in his eyes. And he put one arm around her supple waist.
“Something is dreadfully wrong,” he said; “all this must be explained — our strange encounter, our speaking, our talking at cross purposes, our candid interest in each other — the sudden, swift, unfeigned friendship that was born the instant that our eyes encountered — —”
“I know it. It was born. Oh, I know it. I know it, and I could not help it — somehow — somehow — —”
“It — it was almost like — like — love at first sight,” he whispered.
“It was — something like it — I am afraid — —”
“Do you think it was love?”
“I don’t know. . . . Do you?”
“I don’t know. . . . You mustn’t cry. Put your head down — here. You mustn’t be distressed.”
“I am, dreadfully.”
“You mustn’t be.”
“I can’t help it — now.”
“Could you help it if you — loved me?”
“Oh, no! Oh, no! It would distress me beyond measure to — to love you. Oh, it must not be — it must not happen to me — —”
“It is already happening to me.”
“Don’t let it! Don’t let it happen to either of us! Please — please — —”
“But — it is happening all the while, Amourette.”
She drew a swift, startled sigh.
“Is that what it is that is happening to me, too, Mr. Sayre?”
“Yes. I think so.”
“Oh, oh, oh!” she sobbed, hiding her face closer to his shoulder.
“Amourette! Darling! Dea — —”
“L-listen. Because now I’ve got
to tell you all about the disappearance of those perfectly horrid young specimens of physical perfection. And after that you will abhor me!”
“Abhor you! Dearest — dearest and most divine of women!”
“Wait!” she sobbed. “I’ve got myself and you into the most awful scrape you ever dreamed of by falling in love with you at first sight!”
And she turned her face closer to his shoulder and slipped one desperate little hand into his.
IV
About two o’clock that afternoon Sayre rushed into camp with his scanty hair on end.
Langdon, who had been attempting to boil a blank-book for dinner, gazed at him in consternation.
“What is it? Bears, William?” he asked fearfully. “D-d-don’t be f-f-frightened; I’ll stand by you.”
“It isn’t bears, you simp! I’ve just unearthed the most colossal conspiracy of the century! Curtis, things are happening in these woods that are incredible, abominable, horrible — —”
“What is happening?” faltered Langdon, turning paler. “Murder?”
“Worse! They’ve got Willett and the others! She admitted it to me — —”
“Hey?”
“Willett and Carrick and the others!” shouted Sayre, gesticulating. “They’ve caught ’em all! She said so! I — —”
“They? She? Who’s caught what? Who’s ‘they’? What it is? Who’s ‘she’? What are you talking about, anyway?”
“Amourette told me — —”
“Amourette? Who the deuce is Amourette?”
“I don’t know. Shut up! My head’s spinning like a gyroscope. All I know is that I want to marry her and she won’t let me — and I believe she would if I had a reliable hair-restorer and wasn’t near-sighted — but she ran away and got inside the fence and locked the gate.”
“Are you drunk?” demanded Langdon, “or merely frolicsome?”
“I don’t know. I guess I am. I’m about everything else. What do I know about anything anyway? Nothing!”
He began to run around in circles; Langdon, having seen similar symptoms in demented cats, regarded him with growing alarm.
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