Once more their lips joined. Their mouths and their eyes were those of Adam and Eve. I recalled the ancestral lesson from which sacred history and human history flow as from a fountain. They wandered in the penetrating light of paradise without knowledge. They were as if they did not exist. When—through triumphant curiosity, though forbidden by God himself—they learned the secret, the sky was darkened. The certainty of a future of sorrow had fallen upon them. Angels pursued them like vultures. They grovelled on the ground from day to day, but they had created love, they had replaced divine riches by the poverty of belonging to each other.
The two little children had taken their parts in the eternal drama. By talking to each other as they did they had restored to their first names their full significance.
"I should like to love you more. I should like to love you harder.
How could I?"
. . . . .
They said no more, as though there were no more words for them. They were completely absorbed in themselves, and their hands trembled.
Then they rose, and as they did so, the door opened. There stood the old stooping grandmother. She came out of the grey, out of the realm of phantoms, out of the past. She was looking for them as if they had gone astray. She called them in a low voice. She put into her tone a great gentleness, almost sadness, strangely harmonising with the children's presence.
"You are here, children?" she said, with a kind little laugh. "What are you doing here? Come, they are looking for you."
She was old and faded, but she was angelic, with her gown fastened up to her neck. Beside these two, who were preparing for the large life, she was, thenceforth, like a child, inactive, useless.
They rushed into her arms, and pressed their foreheads against her saintly mouth. They seemed to be saying good-by to her forever.
. . . . .