He cried out: “Blessed be God!” seeing her coming.
She answered: “Blessed be God!” even as she came.
He had had earthly dreams of meeting her after Death in some roseate land beyond the sunset, dressed in the well-loved, sober black silk gown, white cap and little cape, walking upon the virgin shores of some tideless, opal ocean.
This was the Divine reality—that she should move to him through a whispering sea of lilies; robed in the spotless glory of her unstained virginity, with the shining halo of her long martyrdom hovering over her pure brow, reflected in her radiant eyes.
“O my Love!” she said, in that thought-speech of Paradise that is sweeter than all the singing of all the nightingales of earth, “there is no marriage in Heaven, but there is Oneness. It is God’s gift to souls that have faithfully loved on earth!”
“O my Love!” he said, “I never dreamed you half so beautiful.”
“And ah! my Love,” she answered back, “I never knew before how glorious you were!”
They were speechless for a moment, gazing on each other, while the little years of our earth flitted by, and its men and women were born, and grew up and grew old. She held out both hands to him then, and he would have fallen at her feet, but, “No!” she said, and opened her dear arms, and took him to her breast instead.
And heart to heart they stood; lips hushed on lips in the kiss of Paradise that outweighs all the joys we covet. And the lilies kept whispering as though they knew a secret. “Who is coming?” they rustled to each other. “We know!—we know!”
There was a Footstep in that holy place. The lilies ceased whispering—it was still, so still! Who came, moving through His Garden of Paradise as of old time He moved through His earthly Eden, calling the man and the woman? The lilies knew, but they did not say.