Theron and Celia walked in silence for some minutes, until the noises of the throng they had left behind were lost.
The path they followed had grown indefinite among the grass and creepers of the forest carpet; now it seemed to end altogether in a little copse of young birches, the delicately graceful stems of which were clustered about a parent stump, long since decayed and overgrown with lichens and layers of thick moss.
As the two paused, the girl suddenly sank upon her knees, then threw herself face forward upon the soft green bark which had formed itself above the roots of the ancient mother-tree.Her companion looked down in pained amazement at what he saw.Her body shook with the violence of recurring sobs, or rather gasps of wrath and grief Her hands, with stiffened, claw-like fingers, dug into the moss and tangle of tiny vines, and tore them by the roots.
The half-stifled sounds of weeping that arose from where her face grovelled in the leaves were terrible to his ears.
He knew not what to say or do, but gazed in resourceless suspense at the strange figure she made.It seemed a cruelly long time that she lay there, almost at his feet, struggling fiercely with the fury that was in her.
All at once the paroxysms passed away, the sounds of wild weeping ceased.Celia sat up, and with her handkerchief wiped the tears and leafy fragments from her face.
She rearranged her hat and the braids of her hair with swift, instinctive touches, brushed the woodland debris from her front, and sprang to her feet.
"I'm all right now," she said briskly.There was palpable effort in her light tone, and in the stormy sort of smile which she forced upon her blotched and perturbed countenance, but they were only too welcome to Theron's anxious mood.
"Thank God!" he blurted out, all radiant with relief.
"I feared you were going to have a fit--or something."Celia laughed, a little artificially at first, then with a genuine surrender to the comic side of his visible fright.
The mirth came back into the brown depths of her eyes again, and her face cleared itself of tear-stains and the marks of agitation."I AM a nice quiet party for a Methodist minister to go walking in the woods with, am I not?"she cried, shaking her skirts and smiling at him.
"I am not a Methodist minister--please!" answered Theron--"at least not today--and here--with you! I am just a man--nothing more--a man who has escaped from lifelong imprisonment, and feels for the first time what it is to be free!""Ah, my friend," Celia said, shaking her head slowly, "I'm afraid you deceive yourself.You are not by any means free.You are only looking out of the window of your prison, as you call it.The doors are locked, just the same.""I will smash them!" he declared, with confidence.
"Or for that matter, I HAVE smashed them--battered them to pieces.You don't realize what progress I have made, what changes there have been in me since that night, you remember that wonderful night! I am quite another being, I assure you! And really it dates from way beyond that--why, from the very first evening, when I came to you in the church.The window in Father Forbes' room was open, and I stood by it listening to the music next door, and I could just faintly see on the dark window across the alley-way a stained-glass picture of a woman.
I suppose it was the Virgin Mary.She had hair like yours, and your face, too; and that is why I went into the church and found you.Yes, that is why."Celia regarded him with gravity."You will get yourself into great trouble, my friend," she said.
"That's where you're wrong," put in Theron."Not that I'd mind any trouble in this wide world, so long as you called me 'my friend,' but I'm not going to get into any at all.
I know a trick worth two of that.I've learned to be a showman.
I can preach now far better than I used to, and I can get through my work in half the time, and keep on the right side of my people, and get along with perfect smoothness.
I was too green before.I took the thing seriously, and I let every mean-fisted curmudgeon and crazy fanatic worry me, and keep me on pins and needles.I don't do that any more.I've taken a new measure of life.
I see now what life is really worth, and I'm going to have my share of it.Why should I deliberately deny myself all possible happiness for the rest of my days, simply because I made a fool of myself when I was in my teens? Other men are not eternally punished like that, for what they did as boys, and I won't submit to it either.
I will be as free to enjoy myself as--as Father Forbes."Celia smiled softly, and shook her head again."Poor man, to call HIM free!" she said: "why, he is bound hand and foot.
You don't in the least realize how he is hedged about, the work he has to do, the thousand suspicious eyes that watch his every movement, eager to bring the Bishop down upon him.And then think of his sacrifice--the great sacrifice of all--to never know what love means, to forswear his manhood, to live a forlorn, celibate life--you have no idea how sadly that appeals to a woman.""Let us sit down here for a little," said Theron;"we seem at the end of the path." She seated herself on the root-based mound, and he reclined at her side, with an arm carelessly extended behind her on the moss.
"I can see what you mean," he went on, after a pause.
"But to me, do you know, there is an enormous fascination in celibacy.You forget that I know the reverse of the medal.
I know how the mind can be cramped, the nerves harassed, the ambitions spoiled and rotted, the whole existence darkened and belittled, by--by the other thing.I have never talked to you before about my marriage.""I don't think we'd better talk about it now," observed Celia.
"There must be many more amusing topics."He missed the spirit of her remark."You are right,"he said slowly."It is too sad a thing to talk about.
But there! it is my load, and I bear it, and there's nothing more to be said."Theron drew a heavy sigh, and let his fingers toy abstractedly with a ribbon on the outer edge of Celia's penumbra of apparel.
