And the two highly respectable Athenians came out to look at it. “If I were to paint that exactly as it is,” said the first, “every one would say that my picture was intensely unnatural.”
“Great Zeus!” ejaculated the second, for the first had made the remark nearly every night for rather more than sixteen years, and still thought there was a certain insight about it.
In the golden heart of the cloud were together the soul of a youth and the soul of a young girl, two souls that had done their work and were resting. He sat in careless happiness looking down at her: for she was stretched at his feet, making a daisy-chain with the souls of the daisies that were to bloom next year. And ever she would look up from her work into his eyes; and the eyes of the two were strangely alike, and soft and bright.
Into the cloud came the Manager. He was in a terrible hurry; for there had been great doings in Sicily, and an army had been cut to pieces, and consequently there was a press of business.
“I’ve called to take your numbers,” he said.
They both gave the same number.
He seemed a little startled, then recovered himself, and jotted it down in his note-book. “I remember now,” he said, half apologetically. “It was not entirely my fault. I had slipped out to get a glass of beer, and I told the boy to send for me if anything happened. But he thought he could manage it himself, and he blundered, and I was blamed. So you both were born in the same body. I hope you were not crowded. Zeus had intended you to be born in different bodies, and fall in love with one another down below. But you can do it up here, you know. It’s not the same thing, but some people think it’s better: it’s much more spiritual. You will have this cloud all to yourselves for as long as you like. At any rate it was not so hard on you as it was on the girl’s body, which had to be born without any soul at all—but I am told that she made money out of it. Well, I must be off; good evening.”
So the Manager departed, and they were alone, and they floated away into the night when the night came. And the sea sang beneath them, and the wind was warm and perfumed with flowers.
“I love you for ever and ever,” he said.
The same remark had just occurred to her—not strikingly original, perhaps, but both were satisfied with it.