"Don't be worried, sweetheart; we'll make a few changes. You're mine now, you know--not only to serve me and labor for me as you have been doing all these weeks, but--"

"But I like it, David. I like doing for you. I hope it may always be so I can do for you."

"Would you like me to become an invalid again so you could keep on in the way you began?"

"Not that--but sometimes I think what if you shouldn't really need me!"

She hid her face on his breast. "I--I want you to need me--David!" It was almost like a cry for help, as she said it.

"Dear heart, dear heart! What are you thinking and fearing? Can't you understand? You are mine now, to be cared for and loved and held very near and dear to my heart. We are no more twain, we are one."

"Yes, but--but--David, I--I want you to need me," she sobbed, and he knew some thought was stirring in her heart which she could not yet put into words. He comforted her and soothed her, explaining certain plans which later he put into execution, so that her duties at the Fall Place were brought to an end and he could have her always with him.

A daughter of her Uncle Cotton, who had gone down into South Carolina to live, was induced to come and stay with the widow, and the girl's brother came with her and helped David on the farm.

Then David made changes in and about his cabin. He built on another room and put therein a cook stove. He could not bear to see his young wife bending at the hearth preparing their meals, and when she demurred, he explained that he wished to keep her as she was and not see her growing old and wrinkled before her time, with the burning heat of the open fire in her face, like many of the mountain women.

One evening,--they had eaten their supper out under the trees,--she proposed they should walk up to her father's path, as she called the spot toward which she so often lifted her eyes, and David was well pleased to go with her. As they set out, she asked him to wait a moment while she went back for something, and quickly returned, bringing his flute.

"I've often wished father could have heard you play on this," she said, as he took it from her hand.

They crossed the little river that tumbled and rushed among great moss-covered boulders on its way to the fall, and followed its wayward course toward its head, where the way was untrodden and wild, as if no human foot had ever climbed along its banks. After a little they turned off toward a tremendous rock of solid granite that had been cleft smoothly in twain by some gigantic force of nature, and, walking between the towering walls of stone, came out on the farther side upon a small level s.p.a.ce, where immense ferns and flags grew thickly in the rich soil, held in place and kept damp by the great cool ma.s.ses of stone.

Above this little dell the hill rose steeply, and Ca.s.sandra led him to a narrow opening in the dense shrubbery surrounding the spot from which a beaten path wound upward, overarched with thickly interlacing branches of birch wood and hemlocks. Along this winding trail they climbed, until they reached a cl.u.s.ter of enormous cedars which made the dark place on the mountain Ca.s.sandra had pointed out to him from below. Here the path widened so they could walk side by side, and continued along a level line at the foot of the dark ma.s.s of trees.

"Here father used to walk up and down reading in his little books; seems like I can hear his voice now. Sometimes he would look off over the valley below us there and repeat parts by heart. Isn't it beautiful here, David?"

"Heavenly beautiful!"

"I'm glad we never came here before."

"Why, dearest?"

"Because." She hesitated with parted lips, and cheeks flushed from the climb. David stood with bared head. He felt as if he were in a cathedral.

"And why because?" he asked again.

"For now we bring just happiness with us. We're not troubled or wondering about anything. No sorrow comes with us. In our hearts we are sure--sure--" She paused again and lifted her eyes to his.

"Sure that all is right when we belong to each other--this way?"

"Yes, sure! Oh, David, sure--sure!" She threw her arms about his neck and drew his face down to hers. "It's even a greater happiness than when he used to carry me in his arms here. There's no sorrow near us. It's all far away."

Thus, sometimes she would throw off all the habitual reserve of her manner and open her heart to him, following the rich impulses of her nature to their glorious revelation.

"Now, David, sit here and play; play your flute as you did that first time when I learned who made the music that I thought must be the 'Voices,' that time I climbed up to see."

They sat under the great cedars on a bank of moss, and David took the flute from her hand, smiling as he thought of that moment when he had stood among the blossoming laurel and watched her as she moved about his cabin, the day before his hurt, and how she had kissed it.

"I used to sit here like this." She bent forward and rested her head on his knee. She had a way of putting her two hands together as a child is taught to hold them in prayer and placing them beneath her cheek; and so she waited while David paused, his hand on her hair, and his eyes fixed on the sea of hilltops where they melted into the sky,--a mysterious, undulating line of the faintest blue, seen through the arching branches above, and the swaying hemlocks on either side, and over the tops of a hundred varieties of pines and deciduous trees beneath them, all down the long slope up which they had climbed.

Thus they waited, until she lifted her head and looked into his eyes questioningly. He bent forward and kissed her lips and then lifted the flute to his own--but again paused.

"What are you thinking now, David?" she asked.

"So you really thought it was the 'Voices'? What was their message, Ca.s.sandra?"

"I couldn't make it out then, but I thought of this place and of father, and it was all at once like as if he would make me know something, and I prayed G.o.d would he lead me to understand was it a message or not. So that was the way I kept on following--until I--"

"You came to me, dear?"

"Yes."

"And what did you think the interpretation was then?"

"Yes, it was you--you, David. It was love--and hope--and gladness--everything, everything--"

"Go on."

"Everything good and beautiful--but--sometimes it comes again--"

"What comes?"

"Play, David, play. I'll tell you another time in another place, not here. No, no."

So he played for her until the dusk deepened around and below them, and they had to make their way back stumblingly. When they came to the wild, untrodden bank of the little river, David resigned the choosing of their path entirely to her and followed close, holding her hand where she led.

When at last they reached their cabin, they did not light candles, but sat long in the doorway conversing on the deep things of their souls.

It still seemed to David as if she held something back from him, and now he begged her for a more perfect self-revealing.

"It is no longer as if we were separate, dearest; can't you remember and feel that we are one?"

"In a way I do. It is very sweet."

"You say in a way. In what way?"

"Why, David?"

"I want your point of view."

"I see. We're not really one until we see from each other's hilltop, are we?"

"No, and you never take me into the secret places of your heart and let me look off from your own hilltop."

"Didn't I this very evening, David?"

"We stood on the same spot of earth and looked off on the same distance, yet in my soul I know I did not see what you saw."

"Pictures come to me very suddenly and just float by, hardly understood by myself. I didn't want you to see all I saw, David. I don't know how comes it, but all the time, even in the midst of our great gladness--right when it is most beautiful--far before me, right across our way, is a place that is dim. It seems 'most like the shadows that fall on the hills when those great piles of clouds pa.s.s through the sky, when it is deep blue all around them and the sun shines everywhere else."