He pictured her
huddled there in the swamp in the cheerless leaky cabin with worse than
no companions. Ah! the swamp, the cruel swamp! It was a fearful place in
the rain. Its oozing mud and fetid vapors, its clinging slimy
draperies,--how they twined about the bones of its victims and chilled
their hearts. Yet here his Zora,--his poor disappointed child--was
imprisoned.
Child? He had always called her child--but now in the inward
illumination of these dark days he knew her as neither child nor sister
nor friend, but as the One Woman. The revelation of his love lighted and
brightened slowly till it flamed like a sunrise over him and left him in
burning wonder. He panted to know if she, too, knew, or knew and cared
not, or cared and knew not. She was so strange and human a creature. To
her all things meant something--nothing was aimless, nothing merely
happened. Was this rain beating down and back her love for him, or had
she never loved? He walked his room, gripping his hands, peering through
the misty windows toward the swamp--rain, rain, rain, nothing but rain.
The world was water veiled in mists.
Then of a sudden, at midday, the sun shot out, hot and still; no breath
of air stirred; the sky was like blue steel; the earth steamed. Bles
rushed to the edge of the swamp and stood there irresolute. Perhaps--if
the water had but drained from the cotton!--it was so strong and tall!
But, pshaw! Where was the use of imagining? The lagoon had been level
with the dykes a week ago; and now? He could almost see the beautiful
Silver Fleece, bedraggled, drowned, and rolling beneath the black lake
of slime.
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