Yes, by such little jokes–what Leslie called Jokes of the First Category, Aurora sought to enliven the hour for Gerald. He never omitted to laugh, without being able to enter enough into her fun to join her in the same species. An incapacity. Still, there was no disguising the basking enjoyment possessing him, his love of her gaiety, if not at all moments of the form it took.
Finding it entrancing up there, they decided not to start for home till the last minute possible. A limit was set to the time they might linger by the necessity for some degree of daylight in making the descent. From the edge of the curving road the mountain dropped away without the protection of any parapet.
When they had found their ideal place in which to sit on the warm earth in the shade and look off over valleys and mountains into azure space, Aurora at last consented 392to be still. She became dreamy, appeared sweetly fatigued, and was for a long time mute.
Though the mere quality of her voice still had power to stir Gerald’s heart to pleasure, yet to be silent with Aurora was pleasure of a different order from hearing her voice of rough velvet recount preposterous events or propound humorous riddles.
It looked from where they sat as if the land had at some time been fluid, and been tossing, green and purple, in a majestic storm, when some great word of command had fixed it in the midst of motion, and the waves became Apennines; then in an hour of peculiar affection for that plot of the earth a faultless artist from the skies had been set to oversee nature and man at their work there, and prevent the intrusion of one note not in harmony with his most distinguished dream.
“If Italy should perish and all else remain,” said Gerald, whose eyes had been feasting on beauties of line and color such as he conceived were not to be found outside this land of his idolatry, “the world would be irreparably impoverished. If all the world besides should perish and Italy remain, the world could still boast of infinite riches.”
Aurora gave a nod of at least partial assent. She was growing accustomed to the thought that Italy was the fairest of countries and Florence the fairest of Italian cities. She found herself beginning to like this creed.
In the quiet that descended upon them the native piety in each groped for some acknowledgment to make of his consciousness at the moment of unusual blessing. In him it took the form of a renewal, more devoted perhaps than ever, of the determination to maintain an uncompromising 393purity of aim in his work. The incomparable scene stimulated within him a sense of power to produce things rivaling what lay under his eyes; he, atom, rivaling his Maker in the creation of beauty. In her it was a determination of greater loyalty toward the Provider of undeservedly happy days to man, whose heart is wicked from his birth, as her mother had been wont to tell her.
Hearing her hum very softly to herself, he asked what she sang. She said, her mother’s favorite hymn, and gave it aloud, with the words: