The afternoon shadows lengthen. Home-going groups are beginning the long descent. The voices of little children calling to one another silverly over the hillside. He and She are not hastening. They have loitered along to where a bend in the road affords a wide outlook upon the city below, the gleaming bay, the white-winged ships coming in through the Golden Gate, the distant hills. In her hand are some poppies which he gathered.
Down to the western horizon sinks the sun. The gold has faded from the road, leaving it a winding ribbon of grey. The crests of the hills and the gently swelling uplands are flooded with crimson light. It touches the eucalyptus trees into glory and flames in splendor along the western sky. It lights her face and his as they stand transformed before each other. They do not know that the crimson light has made them beautiful. They think the beauty each sees is the other’s, a part of their wonderful discovery, and who shall say that either is wrong? It is we who are blind, and not love. Indeed, love, alone, sees clearly. External, temporal conditions have made his body less than noble; have crossed his face with dull, heavy lines. They have narrowed her mental horizon and imprisoned her soul in a poor little cage, but He and She are held above these, now. They have been touched by the finger of God, and have seen each other’s beauty, the beauty that is their human right; that once seen is never, again, wholly lost.
The crimson has faded to rose, the rose to
wonderful green—the green has turned to
