"Lucy, what does this German mean. As near as I can pronounce it, it
sounds like this. 'Loben ist nicht lieben'?"
"Say it again."
Helen repeated the sentence.
"Oh! Why, it sounds like 'praising is not loving.' Where did you hear
it?"
"Oh, I heard it. I wondered what it meant. You know I don't care for
German."
"Nor for _the_ German?" Miss Gray ventured.
"Nor for _the_ German," Helen said after a pause. And that was as near
as she came to exchanging confidences with Miss Gray. But was there
anything to give in exchange?
She asked the question several times on the way home. Her good-bye to
Bauer had been commonplace enough. He had ventured at the last moment
after the party was seated in the wagon ready for the drive to Canyon
Diablo to hand up a book to Helen.
"Would you accept this to use on your journey? You may find it help pass
the time. It's the collection of desert flowers I've been making."
Helen was really pleased and expressed her thanks warmly. But nothing
more was said except the regular good-byes as the Douglases waved their
farewells to all the mission people on the little knoll.
When she was on the train and started for home Helen found on
examination that Bauer's modest volume was in reality composed of a rare
collection of desert plants, and in the back leaves of the book were
several photographs of desert scenes, including a dozen of Oraibi and
the snake dance itself. She found her own person in several of the
pictures, and the farther she travelled from Tolchaco the more
persistently her mind travelled back to that enchanted land of adventure
and heroism and love of humanity. She sighed to think that her own life
seemed so commonplace. And always there obtruded on her mind the thought
of Bauer as he sat there by the river looking at her out of his great
brown eyes and saying, "Loben ist nicht lieben." And always as the days
flew by and she resumed her special work in music at home, the figure
grew more heroic and dignified the longer she mused upon it, while over
all shone the desert sun and the white translucent light, with the San
Francisco mountains calmly lifting up their cool blackness against a
turquoise sky.
Two months later it was Thanksgiving time at the Mission. Somehow,
Elijah Clifford gradually became aware that things were going on that
were being kept from him. Bauer made a mysterious trip to Flagstaff and
when he came back, Mrs. Masters and Miss Clifford carried several
packages into the house which Elijah never had a chance to examine. His
Yankee curiosity finally got the better of him.
"What is all this?" he asked Bauer one evening. "Is someone going to get
married? They needn't keep it from me. But I would like to be invited."
"You'll be invited all right," said Bauer with his rare smile.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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