Evening again—twilight on the Cumberland mountains. The moon had not yet risen; but, through the black lacework of the forest trees which stretched above Big Jerry's cabin to the mountain's summit, shone the beaming radiance of the evening star.
Within the soft shadow of the doorway stood two figures, close together—one tall, broad of shoulder and heavily built, the other of medium height, slender and very graceful—and their arms were about each other's waists. A man and a woman,—as it was in the beginning.
For a long time they stood thus, without speaking,—there was no need of speech, for their thoughts were one.
"So old and well remembered; yet so new and strangely beautiful," whispered the woman, as she let her gaze travel over the broken, far-stretching skyline of the forest-clad mountain side, now fading into the sky, where a memory of the sunset's afterglow still lingered, as though loath to depart and leave the world to darkness.
"Like love: as old as the hills, yet ever new," answered the other.
"Yes. I cannot yet understand, Don, how this new life can be so strangely natural to me. We have been married only three all-too-short days, yet I can scarcely think of the other life as real. Some people speak of their honeymoon as a golden dream. To me it is the sweet reality, and all that went before the dream. Isn't it odd?"
"All of nature's laws are inexplicable, dear heart. But we should not forget that the Almighty's plan for the world did not deal with man and woman as separate entities, but man and woman as counterparts of a single unit, in which His laws should find full expression, if the two were truly mated—not merely married. You remember what Mr. Talmadge said that night."
"I know. We have found, not each other, but the other part of ourselves—ourself. Dear, when did you first realize that it was so?"
"My mind, not until it was free to face the truth; my subconscious soul the first moment that I saw you, I think."