"'Kiss we and part; no further can we go;And better death than we from high to low Should dwindle, or decline from strong to weak.'
"But they were wiser.They would not kiss and part.They would not kiss at all, and thus they planned to stay at Love's topmost peak.They married.You were in England at the time.And never was there such a marriage.They kept their secret to themselves.I did not know, then.
Their rapture's warmth did not cool.Their love burned with increasing brightness.Never was there anything like it.The time passed, the months, the years, and ever the flame-winged lute-player grew more resplendent.
"Everybody marvelled.They became the wonderful lovers, and they were greatly envied.Sometimes women pitied her because she was childless; it is the form the envy of such creatures takes.
"And I did not know their secret.I pondered and I marvelled.As first Ihad expected, subconsciously I imagine, the passing of their love.Then Ibecame aware that it was Time that passed and Love that remained.Then Ibecame curious.What was their secret? What were the magic fetters with which they bound Love to them? How did they hold the graceless elf? What elixir of eternal love had they drunk together as had Tristram and Iseult of old time? And whose hand had brewed the fairy drink?
"As I say, I was curious, and I watched them.They were love-mad.They lived in an unending revel of Love.They made a pomp and ceremonial of it.
They saturated themselves in the art and poetry of Love.No, they were not neurotics.They were sane and healthy, and they were artists.But they had accomplished the impossible.They had achieved deathless desire.
"And I? I saw much of them and their everlasting miracle of Love.Ipuzzled and wondered, and then one day--"Carquinez broke off abruptly and asked, "Have you ever read, 'Love's Waiting Time'?"I shook my head.
"Page wrote it--Curtis Hidden Page, I think.Well, it was that bit of verse that gave me the clue.One day, in the window-seat near the big piano--you remember how she could play? She used to laugh, sometimes, and doubt whether it was for them I came, or for the music.She called me a 'music-sot' once, a 'sound-debauchee.' What a voice he had! When he sang I believed in immortality, my regard for the gods grew almost patronizing and I devised ways and means whereby I surely could outwit them and their tricks.
"It was a spectacle for God, that man and woman, years married, and singing love-songs with a freshness virginal as new-born Love himself, with a ripeness and wealth of ardour that young lovers can never know.Young lovers were pale and anaemic beside that long-married pair.To see them, all fire and flame and tenderness, at a trembling distance, lavishing caresses of eye and voice with every action, through every silence--their love driving them toward each other, and they withholding like fluttering moths, each to the other a candle-flame, and revolving each about the other in the mad gyrations of an amazing orbit-flight! It seemed, in obedience to some great law of physics, more potent than gravitation and more subtle, that they must corporeally melt each into each there before my very eyes.
Small wonder they were called the wonderful lovers.
"I have wandered.Now to the clue.One day in the window-seat I found a book of verse.It opened of itself, betraying long habit, to 'Love's Waiting Time.' The page was thumbed and limp with overhandling, and there I read:--"'So sweet it is to stand but just apart, To know each other better, and to keep The soft, delicious sense of two that touch...
O love, not yet!...Sweet, let us keep our love Wrapped round with sacred mystery awhile, Waiting the secret of the coming years, That come not yet, not yet...sometime...
not yet...
Oh, yet a little while our love may grow!
When it has blossomed it will haply die.
Feed it with lipless kisses, let it sleep, Bedded in dead denial yet some while...
Oh, yet a little while, a little while.'
"I folded the book on my thumb and sat there silent and without moving for a long time.I was stunned by the clearness of vision the verse had imparted to me.It was illumination.It was like a bolt of God's lightning in the Pit.They would keep Love, the fickle sprite, the forerunner of young life--young life that is imperative to be born!