The Very Young Man never knew quite how it happened. The Doctor had told them to check their growth: and he took the drug abstractedly, for his mind was on Aura and how she would feel, coming for the first time into this great outer world.
What quantity he took, the Very Young Man afterward could never decide. But the next thing he knew, the figures of his companions had grown to gigantic size. The rocks about him were expanding enormously. Already he had lost the contour of the ledge. The cañon wall had drawn back almost out of sight in the haze of the distance. He turned around, bewildered. There was no precipice behind him. Instead, a great, rocky plain, tumbling with a mass of boulders, and broken by seams and rifts, spread out to his gaze. And even in that instant, as he regarded it in confusion, it opened up to greater distances.
Near at hand—a hundred yards away, perhaps—a gigantic human figure towered five hundred feet into the air. Around it, further away, others equally large, were blurred into the haze of distance.
The nearer figure stooped, and the Very Young Man, fearful that he might be crushed by its movement, waved his arms in terror. He started to run, leaping over the jagged ground beneath his feet. A great roaring voice from above came down to him—the Doctor's voice.
"Don't get smaller!"
The Very Young Man stopped running, more frightened than ever before with the realization that came to him. He shouted upward:
"I can't stop! I haven't any of the other drug!"
An enormous blurred object came swooping towards him, and went past with a rush of wind—the foot of the Big Business Man, though the Very Young Man did not know it. Above him now the air was filled with roaring—the excited voices of his friends.
A few moments passed while the Very Young Man stood stock still, too frightened to move. The roaring above gradually ceased. The towering figures expanded—faded back into the distance—disappeared.
The Very Young Man was alone in the silence and desolation of a jagged, broken landscape that was still expanding beneath him. For some time he stood there, bewildered. He came to himself suddenly with the thought that although he was too small to be seen by his friends, yet they must be there still within a few steps of him. They might take a step—might crush him to death without seeing him, or knowing that they had done it! There were rocky buttes and hills all about him now. Without stopping to reason what he was doing he began to run. He did not know or care where—anywhere away from those colossal figures who with a single step would crush the very hills and rocks about him and bury him beneath an avalanche of golden quartz.
He ran, in panic, for an hour perhaps, scrambling over little ravines, falling into a crevice—climbing out and running again. At last, with his feet torn and bleeding, he threw himself to the ground, utterly exhausted.
After a time, with returning strength, the Very Young Man began to think more calmly. He was lost—lost in size—the one thing that the Doctor, when they started down into the ring, had warned them against so earnestly. What a fool he had been to run! He was miles away from them now. He could not make himself large; and were they to get smaller—small enough to see him, they might wander in this barren wilderness for days and never chance to come upon him.
The Very Young Man cursed himself for a fool. Why hadn't he kept some of the enlarging drug with him? And then abruptly, he realized something additionally terrifying. The dose of the diminishing drug which he had just taken so thoughtlessly, was the last that remained in that vial. He was utterly helpless. Thousands of miles of rocky country surrounded him—a wilderness devoid of vegetation, of water, and of life.
Lying prone upon the ground, which at last had stopped expanding, the Very Young Man gave himself up to terrified reflection. So this was the end—all the dangers they had passed through—their conquests—and the journey out of the ring so near to a safe ending.... And then this!
For a time the Very Young Man abandoned hope. There was nothing to do, of course. They could never find him—probably, with women and a child among them they would not dare even to try. They would go safely back to their own world—but he—Jack Bruce—would remain in the ring. He laughed with bitter cynicism at the thought. Even the habitable world of the ring itself, was denied him. Like a lost soul, poised between two worlds, he was abandoned, waiting helpless, until hunger and thirst would put an end to his sufferings.
Then the Very Young Man thought of Aura; and with the thought came a new determination not to give up hope. He stood up and looked about him, steeling himself against the flood of despair that again was almost overwhelming. He must return as nearly as possible to the point where he had parted from his friends. It was the only chance he had remaining—to be close enough so if one, or all of them, had become small, they would be able to see him.
There was little to choose of direction in the desolate waste around, but dimly the Very Young Man recalled having a low line of hills behind him when he was running. He faced that way now. He had come perhaps six or seven miles; he would return now as nearly as possible over the same route. He selected a gully that seemed to wind in that general direction, and climbing down into it, started off along its floor.
The gully was some forty feet deep and seemed to average considerably wider. Its sides were smooth and precipitous in some places; in others they were broken. The Very Young Man had been walking some thirty minutes when, as he came abruptly around a sharp bend, he saw before him the most terrifying object he had ever beheld. He stood stock still, fascinated with horror. On the floor of the gully, directly in front of him, lay a gigantic lizard—a reptile hideous, grotesque in its enormity. It was lying motionless, with its jaw, longer than his own body, flat on the ground as though it were sunning itself. Its tail, motionless also, wound out behind it. It was a reptile that by its size—it seemed to the Very Young Man at least thirty feet long—might have been a dinosaur reincarnated out of the dark, mysterious ages of the earth's formation. And yet, even in that moment of horror, the Very Young Man recognized it for what it was—the tiny lizard the Chemist had sent into the valley of the scratch to test his drug!
At sight of the Very Young Man the reptile raised its great head. Its tongue licked out hideously; its huge eyes stared unblinking. And then, slowly, hastelessly, it began coming forward, its great feet scratching on the rocks, its tail sliding around a boulder behind it.
The Very Young Man waited no longer, but turning, ran back headlong the way he had come. Curiously enough, this new danger, though it terrified, did not confuse him. It was a situation demanding physical action, and with it he found his mind working clearly. He leaped over a rock, half stumbled, recovered himself and dashed onward.
A glance over his shoulder showed him the reptile coming around the bend in the gully. It slid forward, crawling over the rocks without effort, still hastelessly, as though leisurely to pick up this prey which it knew could not escape it.
The gully here chanced to have smooth, almost perpendicular sides. The Very Young Man saw that he could not climb out; and even if he could, he knew that the reptile would go up the sides as easily as along the floor. It had been over a hundred feet from him when he first saw it. Now it was less than half that distance and gaining rapidly.
For an instant the Very Young Man slackened his flight. To run on would be futile. The reptile would overtake him any moment; even now he knew that with a sudden spring it could land upon him.
A cross rift at right angles in the wall came into sight—a break in the rock as though it had been riven apart by some gigantic wedge. It was as deep as the gully itself and just wide enough to admit the passage of the Very Young Man's body. He darted into it; and heard behind him the spring of the reptile as it landed at the entrance to the rift into which its huge size barred it from advancing.
The Very Young Man stopped—panting for breath. He could just turn about between the enclosing walls. Behind him, outside in the gully, the lizard lay baffled. And then, seemingly without further interest, it moved away.
The Very Young Man rested. The danger was past. He could get out of the rift, doubtless, further ahead, without reentering the gully. And, if he kept well away from the reptile, probably it would not bother him.
Exultation filled the Very Young Man. And then again he remembered his situation—lost in size, helpless, without the power to rejoin his friends. He had escaped death in one form only to confront it again in another—worse perhaps, since it was the more lingering.
Ahead of him, the rift seemed ascending and opening up. He followed it, and in a few hundred yards was again on the broken plateau above, level now with the top of the gully.
The winding gully itself, the Very Young Man could see plainly. Its nearest point to him was some six hundred feet away; and in its bottom he knew that hideous reptile lurked. He shuddered and turned away, instinctively walking quietly, fearing to make some noise that might again attract its attention to him.
And then came a sound that drove the blood from his face and turned him cold all over. From the depths of the gully, in another of its bends nearby, the sound of an anxious girl's voice floated upward.
"Jack! Oh Jack!" And again:
"Jack—my friend Jack!"
It was Aura, his own size perhaps, in the gully searching for him!
With frantic, horrified haste, the Very Young Man ran towards the top of the gully. He shouted warningly, as he ran.
Aura must have heard him, for her voice changed from anxiety to a glad cry of relief. He reached the top of the gully; at its bottom—forty feet below down its precipitous side—stood Aura, looking up, radiant, to greet him.
"I took the drug," she cried. "I took it before they could forbid me. They are waiting—up there for us. There is no danger now, Jack."
The Very Young Man tried to silence her. A noise down the gully made him turn. The gigantic reptile appeared round the nearby bend. It saw the girl and scuttled forward, rattling the loose bowlders beneath its feet as it came.
Aura saw it the same instant. She looked up helplessly to the Very Young Man above her; then she turned and ran down the gully.
The Very Young Man stood transfixed. It was a sheer drop of forty feet or more to the gully floor beneath him. There was seemingly nothing that he could do in those few terrible seconds, and yet with subconscious, instinctive reasoning, he did the one and only thing possible. A loose mass of the jagged, gold quartz hung over the gully wall. Frantically he tore at it—pried loose with feet and hands a bowlder that hung poised. As the lizard approached, the loosened rock slid forward, and dropped squarely upon the reptile's broad back.
It was a bowlder nearly as large as the Very Young Man himself, but the gigantic reptile shook it off, writhing and twisting for an instant, and hurling the smaller loose rocks about the floor of the gully with its struggles.
The Very Young Man cast about for another missile, but there were none at hand. Aura, at the confusion, had stopped about two hundred feet away.
"Run!" shouted the Very Young Man. "Hide somewhere! Run!"
The lizard, momentarily stunned, recovered swiftly. Again it started forward, seemingly now as alert as before. And then, without warning, in the air above his head the Very Young Man heard the rush of gigantic wings. A tremendous grey body swooped past him and into the gully—a bird larger in proportion than the lizard itself.... It was the little sparrow the Chemist had sent in from the outside world—maddened now by thirst and hunger, which to the reptile had been much more endurable.
The Very Young Man, shouting again to Aura to run, stood awestruck, watching the titanic struggle that was raging below him. The great lizard rose high on its forelegs to meet this enemy. Its tremendous jaws opened—and snapped closed; but the bird avoided them. Its huge claws gripped the reptile's back; its flapping wings spread the sixty foot width of the gully as it strove to raise its prey into the air. The roaring of these enormous wings was deafening; the wind from them as they came up tore past the Very Young Man in violent gusts; and as they went down, the suction of air almost swept him over the brink of the precipice. He flung himself prone, clinging desperately to hold his position.
The lizard threshed and squirmed. A swish of its enormous tail struck the gully wall and brought down an avalanche of loose, golden rock. But the giant bird held its grip; its bill—so large that the Very Young Man's body could easily have lain within it—pecked ferociously at the lizard's head.
It was a struggle to the death—an unequal struggle, though it raged for many minutes with an uncanny fury. At last, dragging its adversary to where the gully was wider, the bird flapped its wings with freedom of movement and laboriously rose into the air.
And a moment later the Very Young Man, looking upward, saw through the magic diminishing glass of distance, a little sparrow of his own world, with a tiny, helpless lizard struggling in its grasp.
"Aura! Don't cry, Aura! Gosh, I don't want you to cry—everything's all right now."
The Very Young Man sat awkwardly beside the frightened girl, who, overcome by the strain of what she had been through, was crying silently. It was strange to see Aura crying; she had always been such a Spartan, so different from any other girl he had ever known. It confused him.
"Don't cry, Aura," he repeated. He tried clumsily to soothe her. He wanted to thank her for what she had done in risking her life to find him. He wanted to tell her a thousand tender things that sprang into his heart as he sat there beside her. But when she raised her tear-stained face and smiled at him bravely, all he said was:
"Gosh, that was some fight, wasn't it? It was great of you to come down after me, Aura. Are they waiting for us up there?" And then when she nodded:
"We'd better hurry, Aura. How can we ever find them? We must have come miles from where they are."
She smiled at him quizzically through her tears.
"You forget, Jack, how small we are. They are waiting on the little ledge for us—and all this country—" She spread her arms toward the vast wilderness that surrounded them—"this is all only a very small part of that same ledge on which they are standing."
It was true; and the Very Young Man realized it at once.
Aura had both drugs with her. They took the one to increase their size, and without mishap or moving from where they were, rejoined those on the little ledge who were so anxiously awaiting them.
For half an hour the Very Young Man recounted his adventure, with praises of Aura that made the girl run to her sister to hide her confusion. Then once more the party started its short climb out of the valley of the scratch. In ten minutes they were all safely on the top—on the surface of the ring at last.
The Banker, lying huddled in his chair in the clubroom, awoke with a start. The ring lay at his feet—a shining, golden band gleaming brightly in the light as it lay upon the black silk handkerchief. The Banker shivered a little for the room was cold. Then he realized he had been asleep and looked at his watch. Three o'clock! They had been gone seven hours, and he had not taken the ring back to the Museum as they had told him to. He rose hastily to his feet; then as another thought struck him, he sat down again, staring at the ring.
The honk of an automobile horn in the street outside aroused him from his reverie. He got to his feet and mechanically began straightening up the room, packing up the several suit-cases. Then with obvious awe, and a caution that was almost ludicrous, he fixed the ring in its frame within the valise prepared for it. He lighted the little light in the valise, and, every moment or two, went back to look searchingly down at the ring inside.
When everything was packed the Banker left the room, returning in a moment with two of the club attendants. They carried the suit-cases outside, the Banker himself gingerly holding the bag containing the ring.
"A taxi," he ordered when they were at the door. Then he went to the desk, explaining that his friends had left earlier in the evening and that they had finished with the room.
To the taxi-driver he gave a number that was not the Museum address, but that of his own bachelor apartment on Park Avenue. It was still raining as he got into the taxi; he held the valise tightly on his lap, looking into it occasionally and gruffly ordering the chauffeur to drive slowly.
In the sumptuous living-room of his apartment he spread the handkerchief on the floor under the center electrolier and laid the ring upon it. Dismissing the astonished and only half-awake butler with a growl, he sat down in an easy-chair facing the ring, and in a few minutes more was again fast asleep.
In the morning when the maid entered he was still sleeping. Two hours later he rang for her, and gave tersely a variety of orders. These she and the butler obeyed with an air that plainly showed they thought their master had taken leave of his senses.
They brought him his breakfast and a bath-robe and slippers. And the butler carried in a mattress and a pair of blankets, laying them with a sigh on the hardwood floor in a corner of the room.
Then the Banker waved them away. He undressed, put on his bath-robe and slippers and sat down calmly to eat his breakfast. When he had finished he lighted a cigar and sat again in his easy-chair, staring at the ring, engrossed with his thoughts. Three days he would give them. Three days, to be sure they had made the trip successfully. Then he would take the ring to the Museum. And every Sunday he would visit it; until they came back—if they ever did.
The Banker's living-room with its usually perfect appointments was in thorough disorder. His meals were still being served him there by his dismayed servants. The mattress still lay in the corner; on it the rumpled blankets showed where he had been sleeping. For the hundredth time during his long vigil the Banker, still wearing his dressing-gown and slippers and needing a shave badly, put his face down close to the ring. His heart leaped into his throat; his breath came fast; for along the edge of the ring a tiny little line of figures was slowly moving.
He looked closer, careful lest his laboured breathing blow them away. He saw they were human forms—little upright figures, an eighth of an inch or less in height—moving slowly along one behind the other. He counted nine of them. Nine! he thought, with a shock of surprise. Why, only three had gone in! Then they had found Rogers, and were bringing him and others back with him!
Relief from the strain of many hours surged over the Banker. His eyes filled with tears; he dashed them away—and thought how ridiculous a feeling it was that possessed him. Then suddenly his head felt queer; he was afraid he was going to faint. He rose unsteadily to his feet, and threw himself full-length upon the mattress in the corner of the room. Then his senses faded. He seemed hardly to faint, but rather to drift off into an involuntary but pleasant slumber.
With returning consciousness the Banker heard in the room a confusion of many voices. He opened his eyes; the Doctor was sitting on the mattress beside him. The Banker smiled and parted his lips to speak, but the Doctor interrupted him.
"Well, old friend!" he cried heartily. "What happened to you? Here we are back all safely."
The Banker shook his friend's hand with emotion; then after a moment he sat up and looked about him. The room seemed full of people—strange looking figures, in extraordinary costumes, dirty and torn. The Very Young Man crowded forward.
"We got back, sir, didn't we?" he said.
The Banker saw he was holding a young girl by the hand—the most remarkable-looking girl, the Banker thought, that he had ever beheld. Her single garment, hanging short of her bare knees, was ragged and dirty; her jet black hair fell in tangled masses over her shoulders.
"This is Aura," said the Very Young Man. His voice was full of pride; his manner ingenuous as a child's.
Without a trace of embarrassment the girl smiled and with a pretty little bending of her head, held down her hand to the astonished Banker, who sat speechless upon his mattress.
Loto pushed forward. "That'smamitaover there," he said, pointing. "Her name is Lylda; she's Aura's sister."
The Banker recovered his wits. "Well, and who are you, little man?" he asked with a smile.
"My name is Loto," the little boy answered earnestly. "That's my father." And he pointed across the room to where the Chemist was coming forward to join them.
Christmas Eve in a little village of Northern New York—a white Christmas, clear and cold. In the dark, blue-black of the sky the glittering stars were spread thick; the brilliant moon poured down its silver light over the whiteness of the sloping roof-tops, and upon the ghostly white, silently drooping trees. A heaviness hung in the frosty air—a stillness broken only by the tinkling of sleigh-bells or sometimes by the merry laughter of the passers-by.
At the outskirts of the village, a little back from the road, a farmhouse lay snuggled up between two huge apple-trees—an old-fashioned, rambling farmhouse with a steeply pitched roof, piled high now, with snow. It was brilliantly lighted this Christmas Eve, its lower windows sending forth broad yellow beams of light over the whiteness of the ground outside.
In one of the lower rooms of the house, before a huge, blazing log-fire, a woman and four men sat talking. Across the room, at a table, a little boy was looking at a picture-book by the light of an oil-lamp.
The woman made a striking picture as she sat back at ease before the fire. She was dressed in a simple black evening-dress such as a lady of the city would wear. It covered her shoulders, but left her throat bare. Her features, particularly her eyes, had a slight Oriental cast, which the mass of very black hair coiled on her head accentuated. Yet she did not look like an Oriental, nor indeed like a woman of any race of this earth. Her cheeks were red—the delicate diffused red of perfect health. But underneath the red there lay a curious mixture of other colours, not only on her cheeks but particularly noticeable on her neck and arms. Her skin was smooth as a pearl; in the mellow firelight it glowed, with the iridescence of a shell.
The four men were dressed in the careless negligee of city men in the country. They were talking gaily now among themselves. The woman spoke seldom, staring dreamily into the fire.
A clock in another room struck eight; the woman glanced over to where the child sat, absorbed with the pictures in his book. The page at which he was looking showed a sleigh loaded with toys, with a team of reindeers and a jolly, fat, white-bearded, red-jacketed old man driving the sleigh over the chimney tops.
"Come Loto, little son," the woman said. "You hear—it is the time of sleep for you."
The boy put down his book reluctantly and went over to the fireplace, standing beside his mother with an arm about her neck.
"Oh,mamitadear, will he surely come, this Santa Claus? He never knew about me before; will he surely come?"
Lylda kissed him tenderly. "He will come, Loto, every Christmas Eve; to you and to all the other children of this great world, will he always come."
"But you must be asleep when he comes, Loto," one of the men admonished.
"Yes, my father, that I know," the boy answered gravely. "I will go now."
"Come back Loto, when you have undressed," the Chemist called after him, as he left the room. "Remember you must hang your stocking."
When they were left alone Lylda looked at her companions and smiled.
"His first Christmas," she said. "How wonderful we are going to make it for him."
"I can remember so well," the Big Business Man remarked thoughtfully, "when they first told me there was no Santa Claus. I cried, for I knew Christmas would never be the same to me."
"Loto is nearly twelve years old," the Doctor said. "Just imagine—having his first Christmas."
"We're going to make it a corker," said the Banker. "Where's the tree? We got one."
"In the wood-shed," Lylda answered. "He has not seen it; I was so very careful."
They were silent a moment. Then: "My room is chock full of toys," the Banker said reflectively. "But this is a rotten town for candy canes—they only had little ones." And they all laughed.
"I have a present for you, Lylda," the Chemist said after a moment.
"Oh, but you must not give it until to-morrow; you yourself have told me that."
The Chemist rose. "I want to give it now," he said, and left the room. In a moment he returned, carrying a mahogany pedestal under one arm and a square parcel in the other. He set the pedestal upright on the floor in a corner of the room and began opening the package. It was a mahogany case, cubical in shape. He lifted its cover, disclosing a glass-bell set upon a flat, mahogany slab. Fastened to the center of this was a handsome black plush case, in which lay a gold wedding-ring.
Lylda drew in her breath sharply and held it; the three other men stared at the ring in amazement. The Chemist was saying: "And I decided not to destroy it, Lylda, for your sake. There is no air under this glass cover; the ring is lying in a vacuum, so that nothing can come out of it and live. It is quite safe for us to keep it—this way. I thought of this plan, afterwards, and decided to keep the ring—for you." He set the glass bell on the pedestal.
Lylda stood before it, bending down close over the glass.
"You give me back—my world," she breathed; then she straightened up, holding out her arms toward the ring. "My birthplace—my people—they are safe." And then abruptly she sank to her knees and began softly sobbing.
Loto called from upstairs and they heard him coming down. Lylda went back hastily to the fire; the Chemist pushed a large chair in front of the pedestal, hiding it from sight.
The boy, in his night clothes, stood on the hearth beside his mother.
"There is the stocking,mamita. Where shall I hang it?"
"First the prayer, Loto. Can you remember?"
The child knelt on the hearth, with his head in his mother's lap.
"Now I lay me——" he began softly, halting over the unfamiliar words. Lylda's fingers stroked his brown curly head as it nestled against her knees; the firelight shone golden in his tousled curls.
The Chemist was watching them with moist eyes. "His first Christmas," he murmured, and smiled a little tender smile. "His first Christmas."
The child was finishing.
"And God bless Aura, and Jack, and——"
"And Grandfather Reoh," his mother prompted softly.
"And Grandfather Reoh—andmamita, and——" The boy ended with a rush—"and me too. Amen. Now where do I hang the stocking, mother?"
In a moment the little stocking dangled from a mantel over the fireplace.
"You are sure he will come?" the child asked anxiously again.
"It is certain, Loto—if you are asleep."
Loto kissed his mother and shook hands solemnly with the men—a grave, dignified little figure.
"Good night, Loto," said the Big Business Man.
"Good night, sir. Good night, my father—good night,mamita; I shall be asleep very soon." And with a last look at the stocking he ran out of the room.
"What a Christmas he will have," said the Banker, a little huskily.
A girl stood in the doorway that led into the dining-room adjoining—a curious-looking girl in a gingham apron and cap. Lylda looked up.
"Oh, Eena, please will you say to Oteo we want the tree from the wood-shed—in the dining-room."
The little maid hesitated. Her mistress smiled and added a few words in foreign tongue. The girl disappeared.
"Every window gets a holly wreath," the Doctor said. "They're in a box outside in the wood-shed."
"Look what I've got," said the Big Business Man, and produced from his pocket a little folded object which he opened triumphantly into a long serpent of filigree red paper on a string with little red and green paper bells hanging from it. "Across the doorway," he added, waving his hand.
A moment after there came a stamping of feet on the porch outside, and then the banging of an outer door. A young man and girl burst into the room, kicking the snow from their feet and laughing. The youth carried two pairs of ice-skates slung over his shoulder; as he entered the room he flung them clattering to the floor.
The girl, even at first glance, was extraordinarily pretty. She was small and very slender of build. She wore stout high-laced tan shoes, a heavy woollen skirt that fell to her shoe-tops and a short, belted coat, with a high collar buttoned tight about her throat. She was covered now with snow. Her face and the locks of hair that strayed from under her knitted cap were soaking wet.
"He threw me down," she appealed to the others.
"I didn't—she fell."
"You did; into the snow you threw me—off the road." She laughed. "But I am learning to skate."
"She fell three times," said her companion accusingly.
"Twice only, it was," the girl corrected. She pulled off her cap, and a great mass of black hair came tumbling down about her shoulders.
Lylda, from her chair before the fire, smiled mischievously.
"Aura, my sister," she said in a tone of gentle reproof. "So immodest it is to show all that hair."
The girl in confusion began gathering it up.
"Don't you let her tease you, Aura," said the Big Business Man. "It's very beautiful hair."
"Where's Loto?" asked the Very Young Man, pulling off his hat and coat.
"In bed—see his stocking there."
A childish treble voice was calling from upstairs. "Good night, Aura—good night, my friend Jack."
"Good night, old man—see you to-morrow," the Very Young Man called back in answer.
"You mustn't make so much noise," the Doctor said reprovingly. "He'll never get to sleep."
"No, you mustn't," the Big Business Man agreed. "To-morrow's a very very big day for him."
"Some Christmas," commented the Very Young Man looking around. "Where's the holly and stuff?"
"Oh, we've got it all right, don't you worry," said the Banker.
"And mistletoe," said Lylda, twinkling. "For you, Jack."
Eena again stood in the doorway and said something to her mistress. "The tree is ready," said Lylda.
The Chemist rose to his feet. "Come on, everybody; let's go trim it."
They crowded gaily into the dining-room, leaving the Very Young Man and Aura sitting alone by the fire. For some time they sat silent, listening to the laughter of the others trimming the tree.
The Very Young Man looked at the girl beside him as she sat staring into the fire. She had taken off her heavy coat, and her figure seemed long and very slim in the clothes she was wearing now. She sat bending forward, with her hands clasped over her knees. The long line of her slender arm and shoulder, and the delicacy of her profile turned towards him, made the Very Young Man realize anew how fragile she was, and how beautiful.
Her mass of hair was coiled in a great black pile on her head, with a big, loose knot low at the neck. The iridescence of her skin gleamed under the flaming red of her cheeks. Her lips, too, were red, with the smooth, rich red of coral. The Very Young Man thought with a shock of surprise that he had never noticed before that they were red; in the ring there had been no such color.
In the room adjoining, his friends were proposing a toast over the Christmas punch bowl. The Chemist's voice floated in through the doorway.
"To the Oroids—happiness to them." Then for an instant there was silence as they drank the toast.
Aura met the Very Young Man's eyes and smiled a little wanly. "Happiness—to them! I wonder. We who are so happy to-night—I wonder, are they?"
The Very Young Man leaned towards her. "You are happy, Aura?"
The girl nodded, still staring wistfully into the fire.
"I want you to be," the Very Young Man added simply, and fell silent.
A blazing log in the fire twisted and rolled to one side; the crackling flames leaped higher, bathing the girl's drooping little figure in their golden light.
The Very Young Man after a time found himself murmuring familiar lines of poetry. His memory leaped back. A boat sailing over a silent summer lake—underneath the stars—the warmth of a girl's soft little body touching his—her hair, twisted about his fingers—the thrill in his heart; he felt it now as his lips formed the words:
"The stars would be your pearls upon a string,The world a ruby for your finger-ring,And you could have the sun and moon to wear,If I were king."
"The stars would be your pearls upon a string,The world a ruby for your finger-ring,And you could have the sun and moon to wear,If I were king."
"You remember, Aura, that night in the boat?"
Again the girl nodded. "I shall learn to read it—some day," she said eagerly. "And all the others that you told me. I want to. They sing—so beautifully."
A sleigh passed along the road outside; the jingle of its bells drifted in to them. The Very Young Man reached over and gently touched the girl's hand; her fingers closed over his with an answering pressure. His heart was beating fast.
"Aura," he said earnestly. "I want to be King—for you—this first Christmas and always. I want to give you—all there is in this life, of happiness, that I can give—just for you."
The girl met his gaze with eyes that were melting with tenderness.
"I love you, Aura," he said softly.
"I love you, too, Jack," she whispered, and held her lips up to his.