After a while she sat down
under an oak and clasped her hands. "I am growing so old," she sighed, "I no longer take pleasure
in childish things--Donald's dogs, Walter's humming birds, your
butterflies. Jack?" "What?" "Sit down on the grass." "What for?" "Because I ask you." I sat down. Presently she said: "I am as tall as mamma. Why should I study algebra?" "Because," I answered evasively. "Your answer is as rude as though I were twenty, instead of sixteen,"
said Sweetheart. "If you treat me as a child from this moment, I shall
hate you." "Me--Sweetheart?" "And that name!--it is good for children and kittens." I looked at her seriously. "It is good for women, too--when it is
time," I said. "I prophesy that one day you will hear it again. As for
me, I shall not call you by that name if you dislike it." "I am a woman--now," she said. "Oh! at sixteen." "To-morrow I am to be seventeen." Presently, looking off at the blue hills, I said: "For a long time
I have recognised that that subtle, indefinable attitude--we call
it deference--due from men to women is due from us to you. Donny and
Walter are slower to accept this. You know what you have been to us
as a child; we can't bear to lose you--to meet you in another way--to
reckon with you as we reckon with a woman. But it is true: our little
Sweetheart has vanished, and--_you_ are here!" The oak leaves began to rustle in the hill winds; the crows cawed from
the woods. "Oui c'est moi," she said at length. "I shall never call you Sweetheart again," I said, smiling. "Who knows?" she laughed, and leaned over to pick a blade of wild
wheat. She coloured faintly a moment later, and said: "I didn't mean
that, Jack." And so Sweetheart took her first step across that threshold of mystery,
the Temple of Idols. And of the gilded idols within the temple, one
shall turn to living flesh at the sound of a voice. And lo! where
a child had entered, a woman returned with the key to the Temple of
Gilded Idols. "Jack," said Sweetheart, "you are wrong. No day is too fair to kill in. I shall pick my arms full--full of flowers." Over the yellow fields, red with the stalks of the buckwheat, crowned
with a glimmering cloud of the dusty gold of the golden-rod, Sweetheart
passed, pensive, sedate, awed by the burden of sixteen years. I followed. Over the curling fern and wind-stirred grasses the silken milkweed
seeds sailed, sailed, and the great red-brown butterflies drifted
above, ruddy as autumn leaves aglow in the sun. "On the sand-cliff there are marigolds," said Sweetheart. I looked at the mass of wild flowers in her arms; her white polished
skin reflected the blaze of colour, warming like ivory under their
glow. "Marigolds," I repeated; "we will get some." "The sand slides on the face of the cliff; you must be careful," she
said. "And I may see one of those rare cliff butterflies. I haven't any good
examples." I fancy she was not listening; the crows were clamouring above the
beech woods; the hill winds filled our ears with a sound like the sound
of the sea on shoals. Her gray eyes, touched with the sky's deep blue
and the blue of the misty hills, looked out across the miles of woods
and fields, and saw a world; not a world old, scarred, rock-ribbed, and
salt with tears, but a new world, youthful, ripe, sunny, hazy with the
splendour of wonders hidden behind the horizon--a world jewelled with
gems, spanned by rose-mist rainbows--a world of sixteen years. "We are already at the cliff's edge," I said. She stepped to the edge and looked over. I drew her back. The sand
started among the rocks, running, running with a sound like silver
water. "Then you shall not go either," she said. "I do not care for marigolds." But I was already on the edge, stooping for a blossom. The next instant
I fell. There was a whistle of sand, a flurry and a rush of wind, a blur of
rock, fern, dead grasses--a cry! For I remember as I fell, falling I called, "Sweetheart!" and again
"Sweetheart!" Then my body struck the rocks below. III. Of all the seconds that tick the whole year through, of all the seconds
that have slipped onward marking the beat of time since time was
loosed, there is one, one brief moment, steeped in magic and heavy with
oblivion, that sometimes lingers in the soul of man, annihilating space
and time. If, at the feet of God, a year is a second passed unnoted,
this magic second, afloat on the tide of time, moves on and on till,
caught in the vortex of some life's whirl, it sinks into the soul of a
being near to death. And in that soul the magic second glows and lingers, stretching into
minutes, hours, days--aye, days and days, till, if the magic hold, the
calm years crowd on one by one; and yet it all is but a second--that
magic moment that comes on the tide of time--that came to me and was
caught up in my life's whirl as I fell, dropping there between sky and
earth. And so that magic moment grew to minutes, to hours; and when my body,
whirling, pitching, struck and lay flung out on the earth, the magic
second grew until the crystal days fell from my life, as beads, one by
one, fall from the rosaries that saints tell kneeling. Those days of a life that I have lived, those years that linger still
aglow in the sun behind me, dim yet splendid as dust-dimmed jewels,
they also have ended, not in vague night, but in the sunburst of
another second--such a second as ticks from my watch as I write, quick,
sharp, joyous, irrevocable! So, of that magic second, or day, or year,
I shall tell--I, as I was, standing beside my body flung there across
the earth. I looked at my body, lying in a heap, then turned to the sand cliff
smiling. "Sweetheart!" I called. But she was already at my side. We walked on through fragrant pastures, watching the long shadows
stretch from field to field, speaking of what had been and of all that
was to be. It was so simple--everything was clear before us. Had there
been doubts, fears, sudden alarms, startled heartbeats? If there had been, now they were ended forever. "Not forever," said Sweetheart; "who knows how long the magic second
may last?" "But we--what difference can that make?" I asked. "To us?" "Yes." "None," said Sweetheart decisively. We looked out into the west. The sun turned to a mound of cinders; the
hills loomed in opalescent steam. "But--but--your shadow!" said Sweetheart. I bent my head, thrilled with happiness. "And yours," I whispered. The shadows we cast were whiter than snow. I still heard the hill winds, soft in my ears as breaking surf; a
bird-note came from the dusky woodland; a star broke out overhead. "What is your pleasure, Sweetheart, now all is said?" I asked. "The world is all so fair," she sighed; "is it fairer beyond the hills,
Jack?" "It is fair where you pass by, north, south, and from west to west
again. In France the poplars are as yellow as our oaks. In Morbihan the
gorse gilds all the hills, yellow as golden-rod. Shall we go?" "But in the spring--let us wait until spring." "Where?" "Here."