The Goddess Abides: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

stood at the wide window, biting the knuckles of her clenched right hand, tears streaming down her cheeks. O Arnold, you lying alone under the snow!
    Something of that desolation fell upon her now. The house had been full today of this presence, young and strange, yet he was no longer a stranger to her, nor ever had been or could be. Something they shared, something more than music, but what? He had been very gay this morning, almost as though he were glad to go, until at this moment when he stood tall above her, and she saw a look in his eyes, startled and unbelieving.
    “Yes, I like you,” he said and so suddenly, as though he had made a discovery, that she laughed.
    “Delightful to hear,” she said gaily, “and of course you’ll come back. The only question is when.”
    “I’ll let you know.” He stood looking at her and then abruptly he turned and left her, closing the door firmly behind him. She lingered for an instant, gazing at that closed door. The house was silent about her, and empty.
    …“The sunsets are always finest when you are here,” Edwin said.
    She was sitting by the small round table in the bay window of his great square living room. In the distance mountain ranges lifted sharp peaks against a glowing western sky. It was her usual place when she was in this vast old house in the evening, and she seldom missed the sunset when the sky was clear. Today, the second day of her visit, had been very clear. She had spent the hours with “your old philosopher” as he called himself until, an hour ago, he was overcome with one of his fits of weariness and had gone upstairs to sleep. Now he had waked and had come to find her.
    “The sunset is always finest after snow,” she replied.
    She felt his hands on her shoulders, his cheek gently pressing her hair.
    “The unutterable comfort of you, of having you in my house,” he murmured.
    “I am always happy here,” she replied, motionless, her gaze upon the sky.
    The colors were changing now, the violence of crimson and gold subdued to rose and pale yellow.
    “Don’t move,” he said as she was about to rise. “I have something to ask of you.”
    “Yes, Edwin?”
    He was standing behind her and thus out of her sight, his hands still on her shoulders. In the silence she turned her head and saw an unusual tenderness suffusing his face as he looked down into her eyes.
    “Is it something outrageous?” she asked, smiling.
    “I am wondering if you will so consider it. But no—you will understand. I think so. In your own way you are an artist, with an artist’s honesty.”
    “Perhaps you had better prepare me.”
    He came from behind her then and sat down opposite her at the small table. His head, the white hair and clipped white mustache, the fair, healthy skin and bright blue eyes, made him a handsome portrait against the fading sky.
    “How you can look as you do!” she exclaimed.
    “How do I look?” he demanded.
    “I shan’t tell you. You’re vain enough already.”
    “That is to say—I’m lovable? For you, I mean?”
    “Of course. You know that. Every time you ask me I tell you so.”
    “Ah, but I have to ask,” he complained.
    “So that I have courage to confess!”
    They were bantering on the edge of truth again and beyond it they had never ventured. Or perhaps she was not ready for truth, and perhaps would never be. What she felt for him was an emotion altogether different from the willing love she had given Arnold. But that love had ended, stopped by death, and suddenly, for a while, there was no one to love. In the long months when she knew he must die she had wondered about love. Would it go on living after the beloved was dead? Could so strong a force continue to feed only upon memory? She knew now that it could not. The habit of love became a necessity to love and remained alive in her being, like a river dammed. Now it was flowing again, not in fullness, not inevitably, but tentatively and gently toward this man who sat