married. What—what if I had begun to think of it, too?”
“Married!” The word came from him in a huge gasp of horror as if she had mentioned the abominable, proposed the unspeakable. Then, having heard the monstrous suggestion, he immediately accepted it as a fact. He was like that.
“So! That’s it!” he said furiously. “You’re going to get married, eh? You have fellows, have you? You go out with them, do you? You’ve known it all the time, and you’ve tried to fool me.”
Nakedly, with breast bare to horror, he scourged himself, knowing in the moment that the nightmare cruelty of life is not in the remote and fantastic, but in the probable—the horror of love, loss, marriage, the ninety seconds treason in the dark.
“You have fellows—you let them feel you. They feel your legs, they play with your breasts, they—” His voice became inaudible through strangulation.
“No. No, my dear. I haven’t said so,” she rose swiftly to a sitting position, taking his hands. “But there’s nothing unusual about getting married, you know. Most people do. Oh, my dear! Don’t look like that! Nothing has happened. Nothing! Nothing!”
He seized her fiercely, unable to speak. Then he buried his face in her neck.
“Laura! My dear! My sweet! Don’t leave me alone! I’ve been alone! I’ve always been alone!”
“It’s what you want, dear. It’s what you’ll always want. You couldn’t stand anything else. You’d get so tired of me. You’ll forget this ever happened. You’ll forget me. You’ll forget— forget.”
“Forget! I’ll never forget! I won’t live long enough.”
“And I’ll never love any one else! I’ll never leave you! I’ll wait for you forever! Oh, my child, my child!”
They clung together in that bright moment of wonder, there on the magic island, where the world was quiet, believing all they said. And who shall say—whatever disenchantment follows—that we ever forget magic, or that we can ever betray, on this leaden earth, the apple-tree, the singing, and the gold? Far
