She had not a doubt nor a fear. The smallest of either would have barred her from him. But there was not the smallest shadow between them. Their hearts were one. It was meet and good that their lives should be one also. Wulfrey paced the beach out there and found the silent darkness soothing to his bounding senses.
It was late April. The air was sweet and fresh. The sea just breathed in its sleep and no more. The water rippled silently up the hard sand with scarce a murmur. The darkness of the eastern sky thinned as he paced and watched. There came a soft suffusion of light there. It throbbed and grew. A faint touch of carmine outlined a cloud above it. The darkness seemed to fade and melt out of the sky. All the tiny clouds above him turned their faces to the east and flushed rose-red with the joy of the new day.
He climbed a hill and caught the first golden gleam of the rising sun. His eyes shone, and his face. In his eyes two suns were reflected. But there was only one sun. And they were two and now were to become one. The Perfect Day had dawned.
And just as she, lying in her bed with her face in her hands, had thanked God for His goodness, so he. He flung his right hand up towards the sun in the brightening sky and said deeply, "My God, I thank Thee for this day and most of all for her!"
And, down below, he saw her coming out of the house towards him.
He sprang down to meet her, caught her hands, and looked right down through her eyes into her heart, and was satisfied.
LX
Arm in arm they paced the beach till the sun was well up, and their bank of sand shone in the flood of golden light as it had never shone before,—fresh and sweet as if but new-created.
A light wind had come with the sun. The small waves came hurrying in as though they were invited guests. At sight of the wedding-party they broke into crisp white laughter, curled themselves over in league-long sickles of tenderest lucent green, and raced up the sands to their feet in long soft swirls of liquid amber, laced with bubbles and edged with creamy foam.
"They haste to the wedding, to pay their tribute to the only bride they have ever set eyes on," said Wulf, as they stopped to watch them. "And each one is glad to give his life for a single peep at her."