"Eve," he said, "Eve!"
She turned, and he sprang toward her with an eager cry of joy.
"Eve," he repeated, "Eve, my love, my soul! You have decided; you are going to be my wife. Oh, do not torture yourself or me any longer with doubts that did not enter the mind of God Almighty when He made us what we are. You are my world, dearer than life, more necessary than the air we breathe. We are only one being, separated God knows how long, but united now forever. Nothing can part us again."
He stopped and held out his arms to her. He had taken her into their shelter very often, but now he wanted her to come to him and nestle against his heart of her own will. She took a single step, stretching out her arms to him with a gesture of infinite trust and abandon. The long sheer dress fluttered down to the floor, and lay between them.
They stood as still as if frozen.
"Dare you cross it?" she said, and hid her face in her hands.
He stooped and picked it up, and looked at it as a man might look at the soul of something of which he had never seen the body. He had a sense of his own strength, the glory of his manhood, and a vision of his weakness. She watched him breathlessly. He put the garment down on the table and smoothed it out gently. There was in his face the combined look of a man who sees the cradle and the coffin of his firstborn.
She went and stood beside him, touching the dress timidly. He covered her hand with his own.
"My wife," he said, "we know all there is to say, all there is to risk. We must do what is right. I am going now to set everything at liberty. It is nearly sundown; you will meet me at the rock in half an hour. If we give each other our right hands, we will fear no evil, not though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, for the love in our hearts is deathless, and though the sun sets, it is to rise upon another shore. Death is only an incident, but life is eternal."
"We could not choose differently?" And though she spoke with the upward inflection it was not a question.