Sometimes when I have been in the woods alone or drifting
far out on the water, where there was no sound but its own voice, it
has seemed as if I had only to think--hard--hard--in order to
remember! Only one never does."
"But one may--there is always the chance. I fancied I was near it
once--in a shell hole. The stars were big and close and the earth
seemed light and ready to float away. I almost had it then--my lips
were just moving upon some mighty word--but someone came. They found
me and carried me in . . . I say, the sun is climbing up, let's
follow it."
Hand in hand they followed the line of the sinking sun up the
slippery slope. They both knew where they were going, for every
evening of their stay they had wandered there to sit awhile in the
little deserted Indian burying-ground which lay, white fenced and
peaceful, facing the flaming west. When they had found it first it
had seemed to give the last touch of beauty to that beautiful place.
"It is so different," said Desire, searching carefully, as was her
way, for the proper word. "It is so--so beautifully dead. It ought
to be like that," she went on thoughtfully. "I never realized before
why our cemeteries are so sad--it is because we will not let them
really die--we dress them up with flowers--a kind of ghastly life in
death. But this--"
They looked around them at the little white-fenced spot with its
great centre cross, grey and weather-beaten, and all its smaller
crosses clustering round.
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