A SUMMER EVENING'S DREAM

By Edward Bellamy

1898

It is a village street, with great elms on either side, while along themiddle stands another row set in a narrow strip of grassy common, sothat the street and roadway are in reality double. The dwellings oneither side are not only widely parted by the broad street, but arestill further isolated, each in its large garden of ancient fruittrees. It is four o'clock of a sunny August afternoon, and a quiet, Sabbath-like but for its lazy voluptuousness, broods over the scene. No carriage, or even pedestrian, has passed for an hour. The occasionalvoices of children at play in some garden, the latching of a gate fardown the street, the dying fall of a drowsy chanticleer, are but thepunctuation of the poem of summer silence that has been flowing on allthe afternoon. Upon the tree-tops the sun blazes brightly, and betweentheir stems are glimpses of outlying meadows, which simmer in the heatas if about to come to a boil. But the shadowed street offers a cooland refreshing vista to the eye, and a veritable valley of refuge to theparched and dusty traveler along the highway. 

On the broad piazza of one of the quaint old-fashioned houses, behinda needless screen of climbing woodbine, two girls are whiling away theafternoon. One of them is lounging in a lassy rocking-chair, while theother sits more primly and is industriously sewing. 

"I suppose you 'll be glad enough to see George when he comes to-nightto take you back to the city? I'm afraid you find it pretty dullhere, " said the latter, with an intonation of uneasy responsibilitysufficiently attesting that the brilliant-looking girl opposite was aguest. 

That young lady, when addressed, was indulging in a luxurious countryyawn, an operation by no means to be hurried, but to be fully and lazilyenjoyed in all its several and long-drawn stages, and as thus practiceda wonderfully calming and soporific relaxation wholly unknown to thefretted denizens of cities, whose yawn is one of irritation and not ofrest. "I do so enjoy your Plainfield yawns, Lucy, " she said when shehad quite finished. "Were you saying that it was a little dull? Well, perhaps it is, but then the trees and things seem to be' enjoyingthemselves so hugely that it would be selfish to make a fuss, even if itis n't exactly my kind of fun. "

"Your kind of fun is due by the six-o'clock stage, I believe. "

The other laughed and said, "I wish you would n't make another allusionto George. I think of him so much that I 'm ashamed, as it is. I 'm sure this is a very aggravating place for an engaged girl to beat. One gets so dreadfully sentimental with nothing to take up themind, especially with such monstrous moons as you have. I got fairlyfrightened of the one last night. It drew me out through my eyes like abig plaster. "

"Mabel French!"

"I don't care; it did. That was just the feeling. "

There was no hurry about talking, for the rich, mellow summer silencehad a body to it that prevented pauses from seeming empty, and it mighthave been half an hour afterward that Mabel suddenly leaned forward, putting her face close to the vine-trellis, and cried in a low voice, "Who's that? Po tell me! They're the very first persons who have gone bythis afternoon, I do believe. "

A pretty phaeton was slowly passing, containing an elderly gentleman andlady. 

"Oh, that is only Lawyer Morgan and old Miss Rood, " replied Lucy, justglancing up, and then down again. "They go out driving once a weekregularly, and always at about this time in the afternoon. "

"They look like afternoon sort of people, " said Mabel. "But why does n'tLawyer Morgan take out his wife?"

"He has n't got any. Miss Rood comes nearest to that. Oh, no, youneedn't open your eyes; there's not a properer old maid in town, or oldbachelor either, for that matter. "

"Are they relatives?"

"No, indeed. "

"How long has this Platonic romance been going on, pray?"

"Oh, ever since they were young, --forty years, perhaps. I only know bytradition, you see. It began ages before my day. They say she was verypretty once. Old Aunty Perkins remembers that she was quite the belle ofthe village as a girl. It seems strange, does n't it?"

"Tell me the whole story, " said Mabel, turning round so as to face Lucyas the phaeton passed out of sight. 

"There's not much to tell. Mr. Morgan has always lived here, and so hasMiss Rood. He lives alone with a housekeeper in that fine house at theend of the street, and she entirely alone in that little white houseover there among the apple-trees. All the people who knew them when theywere young are dead, gone away, or moved off. They are relics of apast generation, and are really about as much shut up to each other forsympathy as an old married couple. "

"Well, why on earth are n't they married?"

"People hereabouts got tired of asking that full thirty years ago, "replied Lucy, with a little shrug. "Even the gossips long since woreout the subject, and I believe we have all of us forgotten that thereis anything peculiar about their relations. He calls on her two or threetimes a week, and takes her out driving on pleasant days; escorts herto places of amusement or social gatherings when either of them caresto go, which is n't often; and wherever they are, people take it forgranted they will pair off together. He is never seen with any otherlady. "

"It's very strange, " said Mabel thoughtfully, "and I'm sure it's veryromantic. Queer old couple! I wonder how they really feel toward eachother, and whether they would n't like to be married?"

Awhile after she suddenly demanded, "Don't you think Miss Rood lookslike me?"

Lucy laughed at first, but upon closer inspection of the fair questioneradmitted that there might be some such resemblance as the shriveledapples brought up from the cellar in spring bear to the plump, rosy-cheeked beauties that went down in October. 

If Mr. Morgan and Miss Rood, as they rode past, had chanced to overhearMabel's question why they had not married, it would have affected themvery differently. He would have been startled by the novelty of an ideathat had not occurred to him in twenty years, but the blush on her cheekwould have been one of painful consciousness. 

As boy and girl they had been each other's chosen companion, and asyoung man and maiden their childish preference had bloomed into areciprocal love. Thanks to the freedom and simplicity of villagelife, they enjoyed as lovers a constant and easy familiarity and dailyassociation almost as complete in sympathy of mind and heart as anythingmarriage could offer. There were none of the usual obstacles to incitethem to matrimony. They were never even formally engaged, so wholly didthey take it for granted that they should marry. It was so much a matterof course that there was no hurry at all about it; and besides, solong as they had it to look forward to, the foreground of lifewas illuminated for them: it was still morning. Mr. Morgan wasconstitutionally of a dreamy and unpractical turn, a creature of habitsand a victim of ruts; and as years rolled on he became more and moresatisfied with these half-friendly, half-loverlike relations. He neverfound the time when it seemed an object to marry, and now, for very manyyears, the idea had not even occurred to him as possible; and so farwas he from the least suspicion that Miss Rood's experience had not beenprecisely similar to his own, that he often congratulated himself on thefortunate coincidence. 

Time cures much, and many years ago Miss Hood had recovered from thefirst bitterness of discovering that his love had become insensiblytransformed into a very tender but perfectly peaceful friendship. Noone but him had ever touched her heart, and she had no interest in lifebesides him. Since she was not to be his wife, she was glad to be hislifelong, tender, self-sacrificing friend. So she raked the ashes overthe fire in her heart, and left him to suppose that it had gone out asin his. Nor was she without compensation in their friendship. It waswith a delightful thrill that she felt how fully in mind and heart heleaned and depended upon her, and the unusual and romantic character oftheir relations in some degree consoled her for the disappointment ofwomanly aspirations by a feeling of distinction. She was not like otherwomen: her lot was set apart and peculiar. She looked down upon her sex. The conventionality of women's lives renders their vanity peculiarlysusceptible to a suggestion that their destiny is in any respect unique, --a fact that has served the turn of many a seducer before now. To-day, after returning from his drive with Miss Rood, Mr. Morgan had walkedin his garden, and as the evening breeze arose, it bore to his nostrilsthat first indescribable flavor of autumn which warns us that the soulof Summer has departed from her yet glowing body. He was very sensitiveto these changes of the year, and, obeying an impulse that had beenfamiliar to him in all unusual moods his life long, he left the houseafter tea and turned his steps down the street. As he stopped at MissRood's gate, Lucy, Mabel, and George Hammond were under the apple-treesin the garden opposite. 

"Look, Mabel! There's Mr. Morgan going to call on Miss Rood, " said Lucysoftly. 

"Oh, do look, George!" said Mabel eagerly. "That old gentleman has beenpaying court to an old maid over in that little house for forty years. And to think, " she added in a lower tone, intended for his private ear, "what a fuss you make about waiting six months!"

"Humph! You please to forget that it's easier to wait for some thingsthan for others. Six months of my kind of waiting, I take it, requiremore patience than forty years of his--or any other man's, " he added, with increased emphasis. 

"Be quiet, sir!" replied Mabel, answering his look of unruly admirationwith one of half pique. "I 'm not a sugar-plum, that's not enjoyed tillit's in the mouth. If you have n't got me now, you 'll never have me. Ifbeing engaged isn't enough, you don't deserve to be married. " And then, seeing the blank expression with which he looked down at her, sheadded with a prescient resigned-ness, "I 'm afraid, dear, you 'll be sodisappointed when we 're married, if you find this so tedious. "

Lucy had discreetly wandered away, and of how they made it up there wereno witnesses. But it seems likely that they did so, for shortly afterthey wandered away together down the darkening street. 

Like most of the Plainfield houses, that at which Mr. Morgan turnedin stood well back from the street. At a side window, still furthersheltered from view by a gyringa-bush at the house corner, sat a littlewoman with a small, pale face, the still attractive features perceptiblysharpened by years, of which the half-gray hair bore further testimony. The eyes, just now fixed absently upon the dusking landscape, were lightgray and a little faded, while around the lips there were crow's-feet, especially when they were pressed together, as now, in an unsatisfied, almost pathetic look, evidently habitual to her face when in repose. There was withal something in her features that so reminded you of Mr. Morgan that any one conversant with the facts of his life-romance wouldhave at once inferred--though by just what logic he might not beable to explain--that this must be Miss Eood. It is well known thatlong-wedded couples often gain at length a certain resemblance infeature and manner; and although these two were not married, yet theirintimacy of a lifetime was perhaps the reason why her face bore when inrepose something of that seer-like expression which communion with thebodiless shapes of memory had given to his. 

The latching of the gate broke up her depressing reverie, and banishedthe pinched and pining look from her features. Among the neighbors MissRood was sometimes called a sour old maid, but the face she kept forMr. Morgan would never have suggested that idea to the most ill-naturedcritic. 

He stopped at the window, near which the walk passed to the doorway, andstood leaning on the sill, --a tall, slender figure, stooping alittle, with smooth, scholarly face, and thin iron-gray hair. Hisonly noticeable feature was a pair of eyes whose expression and glowindicated an imaginative temperament. It was pleasant to observe therelieved restlessness in the look and manner of the two friends, as ifat the mere being in each other's presence, though neither seemed in anyhaste to exchange even the words of formal greeting. 

At length she said, in a tone of quiet satisfaction, "I knew youwould come, for I was sure this deathly autumn's flavor would make yourestless. Is n't it strange how it affects the nerves of memory, andmakes one sad with thinking of all the sweet, dear days that are dead?"

"Yes, yes, " he answered eagerly; "I can think of nothing else. Do theynot seem wonderfully clear and near to-night? To-night, of all nightsin the year, if the figures and scenes of memory can be reëmbodied invisible forms, they ought to become so to the eyes that strain and yearnfor them. "

"What a fanciful idea, Robert!"

"I don't know that it is; I don't feel sure. Nobody understands themystery of this Past, or what are the conditions of existence in thatworld. These memories, these forms and faces, that are so near, soalmost warm and visible that we find ourselves smiling on the vacant airwhere they seem to be, are they not real and living?"

"You don't mean you believe in ghosts?"

"I am not talking of ghosts of the dead, but of ghosts of the past, --memories of scenes or persons, whether the persons are dead or not--of our own selves as well as others. Why, " he continued, his voicesoftening into a passionate, yearning tenderness, "the figure I wouldgive most to see just once more is yourself as a girl, as I remember youin the sweet grace and beauty of your maidenhood. Ah, well! ah, well!"

"Don't!" she cried involuntarily, while her features contracted insudden pain. 

In the years during which his passion for her had been cooling into astaid friendship, his imagination had been recurring with constantlyincreasing fondness and a dreamy passion to the memory of hergirlhood. And the cruelest part of it was that he so unconsciously andunquestioningly assumed that she could not have identity enough withthat girlish ideal to make his frequent glowing references to it evenembarrassing. Generally, however, she heard and made no sign, but thesuddenness of his outburst just now had taken her off her guard. 

He glanced up with some surprise at her exclamation, but was too muchinterested in his subject to take much notice of it. "You know, " hesaid, "there are great differences in the distinctness with which wecan bring up our memories. Very well! The only question is, What is thelimit to that distinctness, or is there any? Since we know there aresuch wide degrees in distinctness, the burden of proof rests on thosewho would prove that those degrees stop short of any particular point. Don't you see, then, that it might be possible to see them?" And toenforce his meaning he laid his hand lightly on hers as it rested on thewindow-seat. 

She withdrew it instantly from the contact, and a slight flush tingedher sallow cheeks. The only outward trace of her memory of theiryouthful relations was the almost prudish chariness of her person bywhich she indicated a sense of the line to be drawn between the formerlover and the present friend. 

"Something in your look just now, " he said, regarding her musingly, asone who seeks to trace the lineaments of a dead face in a living one, "reminds me of you as you used to sit in this very window as a girl, and I stood just here, and we picked out stars together. There! now it'sgone;" and he turned away regretfully. 

She looked at his averted face with a blank piteousness which revealedall her secret. She would not have had him see it for worlds, but it wasa relief just for a moment to rest her features in the sad cast whichthe muscles had grown tired in repressing. The autumn scent rosestronger as the air grew damp, and he stood breathing it in, andapparently feeling its influence like some Delphian afflatus. 

"Is there anything, Mary, --is there anything so beautiful as thatlight of eternity that rests on the figures of memory? Who that has oncefelt it can care for the common daylight of the present any more, ortake pleasure in its prosaic groups?"

"You'll certainly catch cold standing in that wet grass; do come in andlet me shut the blinds, " she said, for she had found cheerful lamplightthe best corrective for his vagaries. 

So he came in and sat in his special arm-chair, and they chatted aboutmiscellaneous village topics for an hour. The standpoint from which theycanvassed Plainfield people and things was a peculiarly outside one. Their circle of two was like a separate planet from which they observedthe world. Their tone was like, and yet quite unlike, that in whicha long-married couple discuss their acquaintances; for, while theirintellectual intimacy was perfect, their air expressed a constant mutualdeference and solicitude of approbation not to be confounded with theterrible familiarity of matrimony; and at the same time they constituteda self-sufficient circle, apart from the society around them, as man andwife cannot. Man and wife are so far merged as to feel themselves a unitover against society. They are too much identified to find in each otherthat sense of support and countenance which requires a feeling of theexteriority of our friend's life to our own. If these two shouldmarry, they would shortly find themselves impelled to seek refuge inconventional relations with that society of which now they were calmlyindependent. 

At length Mr. Morgan rose and threw open the blinds. The radiance of thefull harvest-moon so flooded the room that Miss Eood was fain to blowout the poor lamp for compassion. "Let us take a walk, " he said. 

The streets were empty and still, and they walked in silence, spelled bythe perfect beauty of the evening. The dense shadows of the elms lent apeculiarly rich effect to the occasional bars and patches of moonlighton the street floor; the white houses gleamed among their orchards; andhere and there, between the dark tree-stems, there were glimpses ofthe shining surface of the broad outlying meadows, which looked like asurrounding sea. 

Miss Rood was startled to see how the witchery of the scene possessedher companion. His face took on a set, half-smiling expression, and hedropped her arm as if they had arrived at the place of entertainment towhich he had been escorting her. He no longer walked with measured pace, but glided along with a certain stealthiness, peering on this side andthat down moony vistas and into shadow-bowers, as if half-expecting, if he might step lightly enough, to catch a glimpse of some sort ofdream-people basking there. 

Nor could Miss Rood herself resist the impression the moony landscapegave of teeming with subtle forms of life, escaping the grosser sensesof human beings, but perceptible by their finer parts. Each cosy nook oflight and shadow was yet warm from some presence that had just left it. The landscape fairly stirred with ethereal forms of being beneath thefertilizing moon-rays, as the earth-mould wakes into physical life underthe sun's heat. The yellow moonlight looked warm as spirits might countwarmth. The air was electric with the thrill of circumambient existence. There was the sense of pressure, of a throng. It would have beenimpossible to feel lonely. The pulsating sounds of the insect worldseemed the rhythm to which the voluptuous beauty of the night hadspontaneously set itself. The common air of day had been transmutedinto the atmosphere of reverie and Dreamland. In that magic medium thedistinction between imagination and reality fast dissolved. Even MissBood was conscious of a delightful excitement, a vague expectancy. Mr. Morgan, she saw, was moved quite beyond even his exaggerated habit ofimaginative excitement. His wet, shining, wide-opened eyes and ecstaticexpression indicated complete abandonment to the illusions of the scene. 

They had seated themselves, as the concentration of the brain uponimaginative activity made the nerves of motion sluggish, upon a rudebench formed by wedging a plank between two elms that stood closetogether. They were within the shadow of the trees, but close up totheir feet rippled a lake of moonlight. The landscape shimmering beforethem had been the theatre of their fifty years of life. Their historywas written in its trees and lawns and paths. The very air of the placehad acquired for them a dense, warm, sentient feeling, to which that ofall other places was thin and raw. It had become tinctured by their ownspiritual emanations, by the thoughts, looks, words and moods of whichit had so long received the impression. It had become such vitalizedair, surcharged with sense and thought, as might be taken to make soulsfor men out of. 

Over yonder, upon the playground, yet lingered the faint violetfragrance of their childhood. Beneath that elm a kiss had once touchedthe air with a fire that still warmed their cheeks in passing. Yonderthe look of a face was cut on the viewless air as on marble. Surely, death does but touch the living, for the dead ever keep their power overus; it is only we who lose ours over them. Each vista of leafy arch anddistant meadow framed in some scene of their youth-time, painted in theimperishable hues of memory that borrow from time an ever richer andmore glowing tint. It was no wonder that to these two old people, sitting on the bench between the elms, the atmosphere before them, saturated with associations, dense with memories, should seem fairlyquivering into material forms, like a distant mist turning to rain. 

At length Miss Rood heard her companion say, in a whisper of tremulousexultation, "Do you know, Mary, I think I shall see them very soon. "

"See whom?" she asked, frightened at his strange tone. 

"Why, see us, of course, as I was telling you, " he whispered, --"youand me as we were young, --see them as I see you now. Don't you rememberit was just along here that we used to walk on spring evenings? We walkhere no more, but they do evermore, beautiful, beautiful children. Icome here often to lie in wait for them. I can feel them now; I canalmost, almost see them. " His whisper became scarcely audible and thewords dropped slowly. "I know the sight is coming, for every day theygrow more vivid. It can't be long before I quite see them. It may comeat any moment. "

Miss Rood was thoroughly frightened at the intensity of his excitement, and terribly perplexed as to what she should do. 

"It may come at any time; I can almost see them now, " he murmured. "A--h! look!" With parted lips and unspeakably intense eyes, as if hislife were flowing out at them, he was staring across the moonlit pathsbefore them to the point where the path debouched from the shadow. 

Following his eyes, she saw what for a moment made her head swim withthe thought that she too was going mad. Just issuing from the shadows, as if in answer to his words, were a young man and a girl, his arm uponher waist, his eyes upon her face. At the first glance Miss Rood wasimpressed with a resemblance to her own features in those of the girl, which her excitement exaggerated to a perfect reproduction of them. For an instant the conviction possessed her that by some impossible, indescribable, inconceivable miracle she was looking upon theresurrected figures of her girlish self and her lover. 

At first Mr. Morgan had half started from his seat, and was betweenrising and sitting. Then he rose with a slow, involuntary movement, while his face worked terribly between bewilderment and abandonment toillusion. He tottered forward a few steps to the edge of the moonlight, and stood peering at the approaching couple with a hand raised to shadehis eyes and a dazed, unearthly smile on his face. The girl saw himfirst, for she had been gazing demurely before her, while her loverlooked only at her. At sight of the gray-haired man suddenly confrontingthem with a look of bedlam, she shrieked and started back in terror. Miss Rood, recalled to her senses, sprang forward, and catching Mr. Morgan's arm endeavored with gentle force to draw him away. 

But it was too late for that. The young man, at first almost asmuch startled as his companion at the uncanny apparition, naturallyexperienced a revulsion of indignation at such an extraordinaryinterruption to his tête-à-tête, and stepped up to Mr. Morgan as ifabout to inflict summary chastisement. But perceiving that he had to dowith an elderly man, he contented himself with demanding in a decidedlyaggressive tone what the devil he meant by such a performance. 

Mr. Morgan stared at him without seeing him, and evidently did not takein the words. He merely gasped once or twice, and looked as if he hadfainted away on his feet. His blank, stunned expression showed that hisfaculties were momentarily benumbed by the shock. Miss Rood felt as ifshe should die for the pity of it as she looked at his face, and herheart was breaking for grief as she sought to mollify the young man withsome inarticulate words of apology, meanwhile still endeavoring to drawMr. Morgan away. But at this moment the girl, recovering from her panic, came up to the group and laid her hand on the young man's arm, as if tocheck and silence him. It was evident that she saw there was somethingquite unusual in the circumstances, and the look which she bent upon Mr. Morgan was one of sympathy and considerate interrogation. But MissRood could see no way out of their awkward situation, which grew moreintolerable every moment as they thus confronted each other. It wasfinally Mr. Morgan's voice, quite firm, but with an indescribablesadness in the tones, which broke the silence: "Young people, I owe youan apology, such as it is. I am an old man, and the past is growing soheavy that it sometimes quite overbalances me. My thoughts have beenbusy to-night with the days of my youth, and the spell of memory hasbeen so strong that I have not been quite myself. As you came into viewI actually entertained the incredible idea for a moment that somehow Isaw in you the materialized memories of myself and another as we oncewalked this same path. "

The young man bowed, as Mr. Morgan ended, in a manner indicating hisacceptance of the apology, although he looked both amazed and amused. But the explanation had a very different effect upon the girl at hisside. As she listened, her eyes had filled with tears, and her face hadtaken on a wonderfully tender, pitiful smile. When he ended speaking, she impulsively said, "I 'm so sorry we were not what you thought us!Why not pretend we are, to-night at least? We can pretend it, you know. The moonlight makes anything possible;" and then glancing at Miss Rood, she added, as if almost frightened, "Why, how much we look alike! I 'mnot sure it isn't true, anyway. "

This was, in fact, an unusually marked example of those casualresemblances between strangers which are sometimes seen. The hair of theone was indeed gray and that of the other dark, but the eyes were of thesame color by night, and the features, except for the greater fullnessof the younger face, were cast in the same mould, while figure andbearing were strikingly similar, although daylight would doubtless haverevealed diversities, enough that moonlight refused to disclose. 

The two women looked at each other with an expression almost ofsuspicion and fear, while the young man observed, "Your mistake wascertainly excusable, sir. "

"It will be the easier to pretend, " said the girl, as with ahalf-serious, half-sportive imperiousness she laid her hand on Mr. Morgan's arm. "And now it is thirty years ago, and we are walkingtogether. " He involuntarily obeyed the slight pressure, and they walkedslowly away, leaving the other two, after an embarrassed pause, tofollow them. 

For some time they walked in silence. He was deliberately abandoninghimself to the illusion, supported as it was by the evidence of hissenses, that he was wandering in some of the mysterious be-tween-worldswhich he had so often dreamed of, with the love of his youth in heryouth-time charm. Did he really believe it to be so? Belief is a termquite irrelevant to such a frame as his, in which the reflectiveand analytical powers are for a time purposely held in abeyance. Thecircumstances of her introduction to him had dropped from his mind asirrelevant accidents, like the absurdities which occur in our sweetestand most solemn dreams without marring their general impression in ourmemories. Every glance he threw upon his companion, while on the onehand it shocked his illusion in that she seemed not likely to vanishaway, on the other strengthened it with an indescribable thrill by therevelation of some fresh trait of face or figure, some new expression, that reproduced the Miss Rood of his youth. Not, indeed, that itis likely his companion was thus perfectly the double of that lady, although so much resembling her, but the common graces of maidenhoodwere in Mr. Morgan's mind the peculiar personal qualities of the onlywoman he had ever much known. 

Of his own accord he would not have dared to risk breaking the charm bya word. But his companion--who, as is tolerably evident by this time, was Mabel French--had meanwhile formed a scheme quite worthy of heraudacious temper. She had at once recognized both Mr. Morgan and MissRood, and had gone thus far from a mere romantic impulse, withoutdefinite intentions of any sort. But the idea now came into her headthat she might take advantage of this extraordinary situation to try amatch-making experiment, which instantly captivated her fancy. So shesaid, while ever so gently pressing his arm and looking up into his facewith an arch smile (she was recognized as the best amateur actress inher set at home), "I wonder if the moon will be so mellow after we aremarried?"

His illusion was rudely disturbed by the shock of an articulate voice, softly and low as she spoke, and he looked around with a startledexpression that made her fear her rôle was ended. But she could notknow that the eyes she turned to his were mirrors where he saw his deadyouth. The two Miss Roods--the girl and the woman, the past and thepresent--were fused and become one in his mind. Their identity flashedupon him. 

An artesian well sunk from the desert surface through the underlyingstrata, the layers of ages, strikes some lake long ago covered over, andthe water welling up converts the upper waste into a garden. Just soat her words and her look his heart suddenly filled, as if it came fromafar, with the youthful passion he had felt toward Miss Bood, but which, he knew not exactly when or how, had been gradually overgrown with thedullness of familiarity and had lapsed into an indolent affectionatehabit. The warm, voluptuous pulse of this new feeling--new, and yetinstantly recognized as old--brought with it a flood of youthfulassociations, and commingled the far past with the present in aconfusion more complete and more intoxicating than ever. He saw doubleagain. "Married!" he murmured dreamily. "Yes, surely, we will bemarried. "

And as he spoke, he looked at her with such a peculiar expression thatshe was a little frightened. It looked like a more serious business thanshe had counted on, and for a moment, if she could have cut and run, perhaps she would have done so. But she had a strain of the truehistrionic artist about her, and with a little effort rose to thedifficulty of the rôle. "Of course we will be married, " she replied, with an air of innocent surprise. "You speak as if you had just thoughtof it. "

He turned toward her as if he would sober his senses by staring at her, his pupils dilating and contracting in the instinctive effort to clearthe mind by clearing the eyes. 

But with a steady pressure on his arm she compelled him to walk on byher side. Then she said, in a soft, low voice, as if a little awed bywhat she were telling, while at the same time she nestled nearer hisside, "I had such a sad dream last night, and your strange talk remindsme of it. It seemed as if we were old and white-haired and stooping, and went wandering about, still together, but not married, lonely andbroken. And I woke up feeling you can't think how dreary and sad, --as if a bell had tolled in my ears as I slept; and the feeling was sostrong that I put my fingers to my face to find if it was withered; andwhen I could not tell certainly, I got up and lit my lamp and looked inthe glass; and my face, thank God! was fresh and young; but I sat on mybed and cried to think of the poor old people I had left behind in mydream. "

Mabel had so fallen into the spirit of her part that she was reallycrying as she ended. Her tears completed Mr. Morgan's mental confusion, and he absolutely did not know whom he was addressing or where he washimself, as he cried, "No, no, Mary! Don't cry! It shall not be; itshall never be. "

Lightly withdrawing her hand from his arm, she glided like a sprite fromhis side, and was lost in the shadows, while her whispered words stillsounded in his ear, "Good-by for thirty years!"

A moment after, three notes, clear as a bird's call, sounded from thedirection whither she had vanished, and Miss Rood's companion, breakingoff short a remark on the excessive dryness of the weather, bowedawkwardly and also disappeared among the shadows. 

When Miss Rood laid her hand on Mr. Morgan's arm to recall him to thefact that they were now alone together, he turned quickly, and hiseyes swept her from head to foot, and then rested on her face with anexpression of intense curiosity and a wholly new interest, as if he weretracing out a suddenly suggested resemblance which overwhelmed him withemotion. And as he gazed, his eyes began to take fire from the fadedfeatures on which they had rested so many years in mere complacentfriendliness, and she instinctively averted her face. 

Long intimacy had made her delicately sensitive to his moods, and whenhe drew her arm in his and turned to walk, although he had not uttered aword, she trembled with agitation. 

"Mary, we have had an extraordinary experience to-night, " he said. The old dreaminess in his voice, as of one narcotized or in a trance, sometimes a little forced, as of one trying to dream, to which she hadbecome accustomed, and of which in her heart of hearts she was veryweary, was gone. In its place she recognized a resonance which stillfurther confused her with a sense of altered relations. His polarity hadchanged: his electricity was no longer negative, but positive. 

Her feminine instinct vaguely alarmed, she replied, "Yes, indeed, butit is getting late. Had n't we better go in?" What lent the unusualintonation of timidity to her voice? Certainly nothing that she couldhave explained. 

"Not quite yet, Mary, " he answered, turning his gaze once more fullyupon her. 

Her eyes dropped before his, and a moment after fluttered up to find anexplanation for their behavior, only to fall again in blind panic. For, mingling unmistakably with the curiosity with which he was stillstudying her features, was a newborn expression of appropriation andpassionate complacency. Her senses whirled in a bewilderment that hada suffocating sweetness about it. Though she now kept her eyes on theground, she felt his constant sidewise glances, and, desperately seekingrelief from the conscious silence that enveloped them like a vapor ofintoxicating fumes, she forced herself to utter the merest trivialityshe could summon to her lips: "See that house. " The husky tones betrayedmore agitation than the ruse concealed. 

He answered as irrelevantly as she had spoken, "Yes, indeed, so it is. "That was their only attempt at conversation. 

For a half hour--it might have been much more or much less--theywalked in this way, thrilling with the new magnetism that at onceattracted and estranged them with an extraordinary sense of strangenessin familiarity. At length they paused under the little porch of MissRood's cottage, where he commonly bade her good-evening after theirwalks. The timidity and vague alarms that had paralyzed her whilethey were walking disappeared as he was about to leave her, and sheinvoluntarily returned his unusual pressure of her hand. 

A long time after, behold her still encircled in his arms, not blushing, but pale and her eyes full of a soft, astonished glow! "Oh, Robert!" wasall she had said after one first little gasp. 

They never met George or Mabel again. Mrs. Morgan learned subsequentlythat two young people from the city answering their description had beenguests at the opposite house, and had left Plainfield the morning afterthe events hereinbefore set forth, and drew her conclusions accordingly. But her husband preferred to cherish the secret belief that his theorythat memories might become visible had proved true in one instance atleast.