So soon have we taught you a
Way to weep, poor Viola!
X
Smile, sweet baby, smile,
For you will have weeping-while;
Native in your Heaven is smile,—
But your weeping, Viola?
Whence your smiles, we know, but ah!
When your weeping, Viola?
Our first gift to you is a
Gift of tears, my Viola!
When the musical flow of his voice had ended, they had advanced many paces further on the path they were treading together, but its end was not yet known to either of them. Viola's cheeks were rose-flushed and her eyes were shining. There was silence for a time as they looked at one another, and love flew to and fro between them unhampered in his flight but hidden from them.
Viola breathed a deep sigh, as she drew her eyes away from his, half unwillingly. "It's lovely," she said. "I didn't know how lovely it was till you said it. I'm glad I've got the most beautiful name in the world."
"And the most beautiful eyes in the world," he said. "I never knew that there was anything half so beautiful as you, though I have always loved the beautiful things in the world. I used to wonder what they meant, and a year ago I thought I had found out. But now I know that I only knew half of it."
"Tell me," she said. "What did you find out a year ago?"
He told her of his moonlight vigil, which he had never thought to tell any one, and the vision that had come to him at the end of it.
Again she listened to him, fascinated, with her eyes on his and her lips apart. But as he drew to the end of his story her face grew a little troubled.
"I should never have seen that," she said when he had finished.