"There were the fingers, but you see how they are melting away. The arm is there still, but the hand is gone. You and I can trace it because we saw it when it was clear, but we could not now show it to another. I wonder whether any one else saw that hand and arm, or only you and I. I should like to think that it was shown to us, and us only."
It was impossible for her now to go back upon that word Rachel. She must pass it by as though she had not heard it. "All the world might have seen it had they looked," said she.
"Perhaps not. Do you think that all eyes can see alike?"
"Well, yes; I suppose so."
"All eyes will see a loaf of bread alike, or a churchyard stile, but all eyes will not see the clouds alike. Do you not often find worlds among the clouds? I do."
"Worlds!" she said, amazed at his energy; and then she bethought herself that he was right. She would never have seen that hand and arm had he not been there to show it her. So she gazed down upon the changing colours of the horizon, and almost forgot that she should not have lingered there a moment.
And yet there was a strong feeling upon her that she was sinking,—sinking,—sinking away into iniquity. She ought not to have stood there an instant, she ought not to have been there with him at all;—and yet she lingered. Now that she was there she hardly knew how to move herself away.
"Yes; worlds among the clouds," he continued; but before he did so there had been silence between them for a minute or two. "Do you never feel that you look into other worlds beyond this one in which you eat, and drink, and sleep? Have you no other worlds in your dreams?" Yes; such dreams she had known, and now, she almost thought that she could remember to have seen strange forms in the clouds. She knew that henceforth she would watch the clouds and find them there. She looked down into the flood of light beneath her, with a full consciousness that he was close to her, touching her; with a full consciousness that every moment that she lingered there was a new sin; with a full consciousness, too, that the beauty of those fading colours seen thus in his presence possessed a charm, a sense of soft delight, which she had never known before. At last she uttered a long sigh.
"Why, what ails you?" said he.
"Oh, I must go; I have been so wrong to stand here. Good-bye; pray, pray do not come with me."