Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard Part 35

"I've only seen her once," said Peter. "I saw her rise up from the water and sit in my tree. And when she spoke and looked at me, it was a child." He put his hand over her wet eyes. "You must stop seeing her, child," he said.

"When I told you my name, were you disappointed?"

"No. It's the loveliest name in the world."

"You said it at once."

"I had to. I'd wanted to say it for twenty years. But I sha'n't say it often, Helen."

"Won't you?"

"No, child."

"Now and then, for a treat?" she looked up at him half-shy, half-merry.

"Oh, you CAN smile, can you?"

"You were to teach me that too."

"Yes, I've a lot to teach you, haven't I?--I've yet to teach you to say my name."

"Have you?"

"You've never said it once."

"I've said it a thousand times."

"You've never let me hear you."

"Haven't I?"

"Let me hear you!"

"Peter."

"Say it again!"

"Peter! Peter! Peter!"

"Again!"

"My boy!"...

"When we got back to the mill-door the last of the twenty years, that had been melting faster and faster, melted away for ever. And you and I were standing there as we'd stood then; and I wanted to kiss your mouth as I'd wanted to then."

"Oh, why didn't you?--both times!"

"Shall I now, for both times?"

"Oh!--oh, that's for a hundred times."

"Think of all the times I've wanted to, and been without you."

"You've never been without me."

"I know that. How often I came to the mill."

"Did you come to the mill?"

"As often as I ate your grain. Didn't you know?"

"I know how often your sea brought me to you."

"Did it?"

"And, oh, my boy! at last the sea brought you to me."

"And the mill," he said. "Where has that brought us?"

"I thought perhaps you'd die."

"I couldn't have died so close on finding you. I was fighting the demons all the time--fighting my way through to you. And at last I opened my eyes and saw you again, your black hair edged with light against the window."

"My black hair? you mean my brown hair, don't you?"

"Oh, weren't you cross! I loved you for being cross."

"I wasn't cross. Why will you keep on saying I'm things I'm not?"

"You were so cross that you pretended our twenty years were sixty."

"I never said anything about twenty years, OR sixty."

"You did, though. Sixty! why, in sixty years we'd have been very nearly old. So to punish you I pretended to go to sleep, and I saw you take your hair down. It was so beautiful. You've seen the threads spiders spin on blackened furze that gypsies have set fire to? Your hair was like that. You were angry with those lovely lines of silver, and you wanted to get rid of them. I nearly called to you to stop hurting what I loved so much, but you stopped of yourself, as though you had heard me before I called."

"I was ashamed of myself," whispered Helen. "I was ashamed of trying to be again what I was the only other time you saw me."

"You've never stopped being that, child," said Peter.

"You knew, didn't you, why it was I had stayed on at the mill? You knew what it was that held me, and why I could never leave it?"

"Yes, I knew. It held you because it held me too. I wondered if you'd tell me that."

"I longed to, but I couldn't. I've never been able to tell you things.

And I never shall."