O Love, look down on us and choir your harmonies! Transported was I, speaking with whirling words of sweetest madness, tremulous, uplifted with rapture, scarce conscious of my wild, impassioned metaphors. It was she, most precious of all creation; she, my beloved. And there, in the doorway, she poised, white as a lily, lustrous-eyed, and with hair soft as sunlit foam. O Divinity of Love, look down on us thy children; fold us in thy dove-soft wings; illumine us in thy white radiance; touch us with thy celestial hands. Bless us, Love!
How vastly alight were the grey eyes! How ineffably tender the sweet lips! A faint glow had come into her cheeks.
"O, it's you, really, really you at last," she cried again, and there was a tremor, the surface ripple of a sob in that clear voice. She fetched a deep sigh: "And I thought I'd lost you forever. Wait a moment. I'll come out."
Endlessly long the moment seemed, yet wondrously irradiate. The shadow had lifted from the world; the skies were alight with gladness; my heart was heaven-aspiring in its ecstasy. Then, at last, she came.
She had thrown a shawl around her shoulders, and coaxed her hair into charming waves and ripples.
"Come, let us go up the trail a little distance. They won't be back for nearly an hour."
She led the way along that narrow path, looking over her shoulder with a glorious smile, sometimes extending her hand back to me as one would with a child.
Along the brow of the bluff the way wound dizzily, while far below the river swept in a giant eddy. For a long time we spoke no word. 'Twas as if our hearts were too full for utterance, our happiness too vast for expression. Yet, O, the sweetness of that silence! The darkling gloom had silvered into lustrous light, the birds were beginning again their mad midnight melodies. Then, suddenly turning a bend in the narrow trail, a blaze of glory leapt upon our sight.
"Look, Berna," I cried.
The swelling river was a lake of saffron fire; the hills a throne of rosy garnet; the sky a dazzling panoply of rubies, girdled with flames of gold. We almost cringed, so gorgeous was its glow, so fierce its splendour.