The Song of the Blood-Red Flower Part 23

"Life is very strange," he said dreamily. "Isn't it strange to have cared very much for a thing--and then one day to feel it as nothing at all?"

She looked inquiringly at him.

"My own life, for instance. Up to now, it has been a beautiful story, but now...."

"Now...?"

"Now, I can't see what it is--or if it is anything at all. Going from place to place, from river to river--from one adventure to another...."

Again there was a pause.

"But why do you live so?" she asked timidly. "I have so often wondered."

"I wonder myself sometimes why I must live so--or if I must--but it goes on all the same."

"Must...? But your home ... your father and mother, are they still alive? You have never spoken of them."

"Yes, they are still alive."

"And couldn't you live with them?"

"No," he said coldly. "They could not make me stay."

"But aren't you fond of them?" she asked in surprise.

He was silent a moment. "Yes," he said at last, "I am fond of them--as I am fond of many other things. But there is nothing that can hold me for long."

Something within him was striving for utterance--something he had long restrained.

"And now," he went on, almost violently, "I want...." He stopped.

"You want...?"

"It is something to do with you, Kyllikki," he said earnestly, as if in warning.

"Tell me. You need not be afraid," said the girl in a low voice.

"I want to say good-bye to you--and _not_ as friends," he said pa.s.sionately.

"Not--not as friends?"

"That is what I said. We met first--you know how it was--it was no friendly meeting. And best if we could leave each other that way too."

"But why...?"

"Because--shall I tell you?"

"I want you to."

He looked her sharply and coldly in the eyes. "Because you have not been what I hoped you would. Ay, and thought you would. I was proud and happy when I knew I had won your friendship. But I thought I had won more than that--something warmer and deeper--a thing complete."

She was silent for a moment.

"Warm and deep--a thing complete?" she repeated. "Did you _give_ that yourself?"

"No! But I could have done. I wished to--but you made it impossible.

We have known each other now for a week--and what has come of it? I have scarcely dared to take your hand."

"But what more could you...?"

"What more? Have you for my own--possess you. All or nothing!"

The girl seemed struggling with some inward feeling.

"May I ask you something?" she asked softly.

"Go on!"

"Have me for your own, you said." She hesitated, but went on resolutely: "Does that mean--have me for your own to-day, and go away to-morrow--and then, perhaps, think of me at times as one among a host of others you have 'possessed'?"

He shot a glance at her, almost of hatred, but said no word.

"Perhaps," went on the girl calmly, "perhaps you too have not been what I hoped and thought. If you had...."

"What then?" he asked quickly, as if in challenge.

"Then you would not--speak as you are doing now," she answered evasively. "And perhaps what makes you angry now is only this--that you can never have more than you are able to take yourself."

He looked at her in wonder.

"And perhaps"--her voice was scarcely audible now--"perhaps you cannot take more than you are able to keep?"

She looked down in confusion, hardly knowing what she had said, only that she had been forced to say it.

He sat watching her for a while thoughtfully, as if he had heard something new and unexpected, and was pondering over it.

"You must have known yourself that I could never keep--or keep to--anyone," he said at last.

"I know that," she answered; "you don't want to."

It was as if a fine, sharp thorn had pierced him to the heart, and left its point there. The two sat looking at each other without a word.

"And if I would...." He grasped her hand earnestly. "Do you think I might dare?"

The girl turned pale, and did not speak.

"Answer me," he said insistently.

"Surely each must know that for himself," she answered at last, speaking with difficulty.