But ever since Edward had made his proposal, David had had a different daydream, of a different kind of day. He would return from whatever he would do on the silk farm—perhaps he could become a documenter of the trees, making botanical sketches of them and overseeing their health—to the bungalow in which he and Edward lived together. There would be two bedrooms, each with a bed, in case they were someday reported and their house raided, but once the night had drawn its curtain over the land, it was to one room they would repair, and it was in that room, in that bed, where they would do whatever they wished, a never-ending continuation of their encounters in the boardinghouse. To live a life in color, a life in love: Was that not every person’s dream? In less than two years, when he was thirty, he would come into some of his fortune, the part bequeathed him by his parents, but Edward had not even mentioned his money—he had mentioned only him, and their life together—and so how, and for what reason, could he say no? True, his forefathers had fought and toiled to establish a land in which he was free, but had they not also ensured and therefore encouraged a different kind of freedom, one greater because it was smaller? The freedom to be with the person he desired; the freedom to place above all other concerns his own happiness. He was David Bingham, a man who always behaved correctly, who always chose deliberately: Now he would begin again, just as his great-great-grandfather Edmund had, but his would be the bravery of love.
The recognition of this made him feel light-headed, and he stood and asked Eliza if he might use her hansom, and she said he might, though as he was leaving she plucked at his sleeve and brought him close to her. “Be careful, David,” she said, gently, but he only brushed her cheek with his lips and hurried down the stairs to the street, understanding that he must speak the words aloud in order to make them real, and he must do so before he set to deliberating once more.
He’d realized on the way over that he’d no way of knowing whether Edward would be at the boardinghouse, but up he went, and when Edward opened the door, David was at once in his arms. “I will go,” he heard himself saying. “I will go with you.”
What a scene it was! Both of them crying, crying and grabbing at each other, at each other’s clothes, each other’s hair, so that if you were watching them you would not be able to tell whether they were in a state of violent mourning or of ecstasy.
“I thought for certain you had decided against it after I’d not heard a reply from you,” Edward confessed after they’d calmed themselves somewhat.
“A reply?”
“Yes, to the letter I sent you four days ago—telling you I’d told Belle I had hopes of convincing you and asking you to do me the favor of letting me try again.”
“I received no such letter!”
“No? But I sent it—I wonder where it could be!”
“Well—I—I’ve not been home, as such. But—I shall explain later,” for again, the urge, the passion, had overtaken them.
It was only much later, as they lay in their usual positions in Edward’s hard little bed, that Edward asked, “And what has your grandfather said to all of this?”
“Well, you see—I haven’t told him. Not yet.”
“David! My dearest. What shall he say?”
Just then, there it was: the slightest of tears in their happiness. But “He shall come around,” David said, staunchly, more to hear himself say it than because he believed it. “He will. It may take some time, but he will. And anyway—he cannot stop me. I am an adult, after all, no longer under his legal protection. In two years, I shall come into part of my money.”
Beside him, Edward moved closer. “Can he not withhold it from you?”
“Certainly not—it’s not his to withhold, after all: It’s from my parents.”
They were quiet, and then Edward said, “Well—until then—you needn’t worry. I will be drawing a salary, and I shall take care of both of us,” and David, who had never before had anyone offer him financial sustenance, was moved, and kissed Edward’s upturned face.
“I have saved almost every penny of my allowance since I was a child,” he reassured Edward. “We shall have thousands, easily. I do not mean for you to worry about me.” Indeed, he would take care of Edward, he knew. Edward would want to work, because he was industrious and ambitious, but David would make their lives not just bold but comfortable. There would be a piano for Edward, and books for him, and everything—rose-hued Oriental carpets and thin white china and silk-upholstered chairs—that he had at Washington Square. California would be their new home, their new Washington Square, and David would make it as familiar and pleasant as he could.
They lay there through the afternoon, and then into the evening, and for once, there was nowhere for David to be: He did not snap awake from his doze only to panic at the sight of the darkening sky, frantically dress, and leave Edward’s beseeching arms so he could bolt back to the hansom and implore the coachman—why: Was he smirking? At him? How dare he!—to go as fast as he could, as if he were back in school, a child about to miss the final bell, after which the doors to the dining hall would be locked and he would have to go to bed without his supper. That day, and then that night, they slept and woke, slept and woke, and when they finally rose to boil some eggs over the fire, Edward stopped him from checking his pocket watch. “Why does it matter?” he asked. “We have all the time we want, do we not?” And instead he was set to slicing a loaf of brown bread, which they toasted over the flames.
The next day they woke late, and talked and talked about their new life together—of the flowers David would plant in their garden, of the piano Edward would buy （“But only after we have become secure,” he said earnestly, and David had laughed. “I shall buy you one,” he promised, spoiling his own surprise, but Edward shook his head: “I do not want you spending your money on me—it is yours”）， of how much David would like Belle, and she him. Then it was time for David’s class—he had been absent the previous two weeks, and had told Matron he would hold a special class on Thursday instead of Wednesday—and he made himself dress and go see his students, whom he instructed to draw whatever they pleased, and then drifted among them as they did, glancing occasionally at their sketches of lopsided faces, of dogs and wild-eyed cats, of crudely executed daisies and pointy-petaled roses, smiling all the while. And after, when he returned home, there was a freshly made fire, and a table of food he had given Edward money to buy, and Edward himself, to whom David now told stories of his afternoon—stories of the sort he had once told Grandfather, which he blushed to remember: a grown man with only his grandfather for company! He thought of the two of them, their quiet nights in his grandfather’s drawing room, his retreats afterward to his study, where he would draw in his notepad. It had been an invalid’s life, but now he had been restored to health—now he was cured.
He had sent back Eden and Eliza’s hansom with a note the evening of his arrival at Edward’s, but on the third night, there was a thumping on the door, and David opened it to find a slattern of a maid, holding out a letter, which he took and replaced with a coin.