BOOK V
GARDEN OF EDEN
LXI
Happy? If all newly-married folk could find such happiness as was theirs, what a wonderful world it would be!
From every worldly point of view they had nothing. They were outcasts, paupers, dependent for the food they ate and the clothes they wore, on Nature and the caprice of the sea. Yet, having nothing, they had everything, since they had one another.
If he had rejoiced in her before, and loved her with a love akin to pain in the repression he subjected it to, he loved her now a thousand times more, and she filled him with a joy that knew no bounds. Time, he said to himself, would not suffice for all their love, it would fill eternity.
The days were never long enough for them. In this new joy of life and perfected fellowship they forgot their years at times, and were like a pair of children, endowed with the freedom of time and space and hearts attuned to the most perfect enjoyment of these new attributes.
They made long journeys and explored every inch of their territory—sleeping out at times in the side of a sandhill under the soft summer night. And those were wondrous times.
—To lie there flat on their blanket, side by side, chin in hand like children, his arm about her, and watch the red sun sink into the water at the end of his fiery trail, while all the sky above burned crimson right into the east behind them.—To watch, with bated breath, the rabbits creeping out to feed and frolic about them, all unconscious of their presence.—To lie and watch the colours fade slowly in the darkening sky, and the stars come out till the whole dark dome was a never-failing marvel of delight.—Or, on the other shore, to lie and watch the moonbeams dancing on the sleeping bosom of the sea.—To feel oneself oneself in the midst of it all—a part of it all—the height and the width and the immensity and wonder of it all.—To feel his arm enfolding her, and all that that meant to them both.—To feel the warmth of life, and all the mighty joy of it, throbbing in her slender body as he drew her closer.—To know, as he knew, that God lived and had given her to him, and that she loved him with every fibre of her being, as he loved her....