The Same, Yet Different
The words said themselves aloud. She had learned the whole poem long ago, but, to-day, the beautiful lines assumed a fresh significance, for had she not, by a single step, passed from the cell of self into comradeship with the whole world? Was she not a part of everything and had not everything become a part of her? What could go wrong when the finite was once merged with the infinite, the individual with the universal soul?
She sat down on the log that Alden had rolled back against the two trees, three years ago, when they had first begun to come to the Hill of the Muses for an occasional hour of friendly talk. Everything was the same, and yet subtly different, as though seen from another aspect or in another light. Over yonder, on the hillside farthest from the valley, he had put his arm around her and refused to let her go.
She remembered vividly every word and every look and that first shy kiss. Of course they belonged together! How foolish they had been not to see it before! Was she not the only woman he knew, and was he not the only man to whom she could say more than "How do you do?" God had meant it so from the beginning, ever since He said: "Let there be light, and there was light."
An Unwonted Shyness
Dreaming happily, Rosemary sat on the fallen tree, leaning against the great oak that towered above her. The first pink leaves had come out upon the brown branches, and through them she could see the blue sky, deep as turquoise, without a single cloud. It seemed that she had always been happy, but had never known it until this new light shone upon her, flooding with divine radiance every darkened recess of her soul.
She went to the hollow tree, took out the wooden box, and unwound the scarlet ribbon. Yesterday, little dreaming of the portent that for once accompanied the signal, she had tied it in its accustomed place, and gone back, calmly to wait. The school bell echoed through the valley as she stood there, her eyes laughing, but her mouth very grave. She had taken two or three steps toward the birches when an unwonted shyness possessed her, and she hurried back.
"I can't," she said to herself. "Oh, I can't--to-day!"
So she restored it to its place, wondering, as she did so, why love should make such mysterious changes in the common things of every day. Won and awakened though she was, her womanhood imperatively demanded now that she must be sought and never seek, that she must not even beckon him to her, and that she must wait, according to her destiny, as women have waited since the world began.