"You will come back?" said she, half-doubtingly.
"Yes," I said. "You wonderful, elfin creature, I shall undoubtedly come back--to your real home, and claim you there. Only I don't believe you do live in Aberlin,--you probably live in some great, gnarled oak hereabouts; and at night its bark uncloses to set you free, and you and your sisters dance out the satyrs' hearts in the moonlight. Oh, I know, Marian! I simply _know_ you are a dryad,--a wonderful, laughing, clear-eyed dryad strayed out of the golden age."
"What a boy it is!" she said. "No, I am only a really and truly girl, dear,--a rather frightened girl, with very little disposition to laughter, just now. For you are going away--Oh, my dear, you have meant so much to me! The world is so different since you have come, and I am so happy and so miserable that--that I am afraid." An infinitesimal handkerchief went upward to two great, sparkling eyes, and dabbed at them.
"Dear!" said I. And this remark appeared to meet the requirements of the situation.
There was a silence now. We sat in the same spot where I had first encountered Marian Winwood. Only this was an autumnal forest that glowed with many gem-like hues about us; and already the damp odour of decaying leaves was heavy in the air. It was like the Tosti thing translated out of marine terms into a woodland analogue. The summer was ended; but _As the Coming of Dawn_ was practically complete.
It was not the book that I had planned, but a far greater one which was scarcely mine. There was no word written as yet. But for two months I had viewed life through Marian Winwood's eyes; day by day, my half-formed, tentative ideas had been laid before her with elaborate fortuitousness, to be approved, or altered, or rejected, just as she decreed; until at last they had been welded into a perfect whole that was a Book, bit by bit, we had planned it, I and she; and, as I dreamed of it as it would be in print, my brain was fired with exultation, and I defied my doubt and I swore that the Book, for which I had pawned a certain portion of my self-respect, was worth--and triply worth--the price which had been paid.... This was in Marian's absence.
Her eyes were filled with a tender and unutterable confidence that thrilled me like physical cold. "Marian," said I, simply, "I shall never come back."