The town behind the hill lay in another unthinkable world.
They forgot its pain and conflict.
“What time is it?” Eugene asked.
For, they had come to a place where no time was.
Laura held up her exquisite wrist, and looked at her watch.
“Why!” she exclaimed, surprised.
“It’s only half-past twelve!”
But he scarcely heard her.
“What do I care what time it is!” he said huskily, and he seized the lovely hand, bound with its silken watch-cord, and kissed it.
Her long cool fingers closed around his own; she drew his face down to her mouth.
They lay there, locked together, upon that magic carpet, in that paradise.
Her gray eyes were deeper and clearer than a pool of clear water; he kissed the little freckles on her rare skin; he gazed reverently at the snub tilt of her nose; he watched the mirrored dance of the sparkling water over her face.
All of that magic world — flower and field and sky and hill, and all the sweet woodland cries, sound and sight and odor — grew into him, one voice in his heart, one tongue in his brain, harmonious, radiant, and whole — a single passionate lyrical noise.
“My dear!
Darling!
Do you remember last night?” he asked fondly, as if recalling some event of her childhood.
“Yes,” she gathered her arms tightly about his neck, “why do you think I could forget it?”
“Do you remember what I said — what I asked you to do?” he insisted eagerly.
“Oh, what are we going to do?
What are we going to do?” she moaned, turning her head to the side and flinging an arm across her eyes.
“What is it?
What’s the matter?
Dear?”
“Eugene — my dear, you’re only a child.
I’m so old — a grown woman.”
“You’re only twenty-one,” he said.
“There’s only five years’ difference.
That’s nothing.”
“Oh!” she said.
“You don’t know what you’re saying.
It’s all the difference in the world.”
“When I’m twenty, you’ll be twenty-five.
When I’m twenty-six, you’ll be thirty-one.
When I’m forty-eight, you’ll be fifty-three.
What’s that?” he said contemptuously.
“Nothing.”
“Everything,” she said, “everything.
If I were sixteen, and you twenty-one it would be nothing.
But you’re a boy and I’m a woman.
When you’re a young man I’ll be an old maid; when you grow old I shall be dying.
How do you know where you’ll be, what you’ll be doing five years from now?” she continued in a moment.
“You’re only a boy — you’ve just started college.
You have no plans yet.
You don’t know what you’re going to do.”
“Yes, I do!” he yelled furiously.
“I’m going to be a lawyer.
That’s what they’re sending me for.
I’m going to be a lawyer, and I’m going into politics.
Perhaps,” he added with gloomy pleasure, “you’ll be sorry then, after I make a name for myself.”
With bitter joy he foresaw his lonely celebrity.