It would not
split, the tapping marred the white silence, and yet again she let the
hatchet fall and sat down on the log instead. It was nearly six--they
had spent the whole afternoon splitting up the logs, and making a fine
pile of short pieces for firewood; the forest was darkening rapidly,
blue deepened above the trees to indigo, and black settled among the
trunks. Only the snow sent up its everlasting shine. Her thoughts fell
and rose. Now they were upon the ground busy with a multitude of small
gleams and sparkles--now they were up and away through the forest
tunnels to Chantilly. What would he say first? How look when he met her?
"Ah, I am a silly woman in a fever! Yet happy--for I see beauty in
everything, in the world, upon strange faces, in nights and days. Upon
what passes behind the glassy eyes" (she pressed her own) "depends
sight, or no sight. There is a life within life, and only I" (she
thought arrogantly, her peopled world bounded by her companions) "am
living in it. We are afraid, we are ashamed, but when one dares talk of
this strange ecstasy, other people nod their heads and say: 'Ah, yes, we
know about that! They are in love.' And they smile. But what a
convention--tradition--that smile!"
There was no sound in the forest at all--not the cry of a bird, not the
rustle of snow falling from a branch--but there was something deeper and
remoter than sound, the approach of night.
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