they lay him,” Edith said after a while.
Dick smiled quietly, and said nothing. He was looking quite pale, but bright. She made no comment on his looks, thinking that the communion was the cause of his emotion.
They went to the public gardens before going home. It was very lovely there. The mists of the morning had slowly gathered themselves into detached clouds, and they scarcely moved, the air was so still. The trees and the many pink flowers about glistened with dew.
Edith began to love her quietude, and grow merry, but with an angelic merriment. “Do you think that the Lord came down to the garden only at evening?” she asked. “I think he came at early morning, unless he stayed all night—morning is so beautiful! How alive everything is! You can almost see eyes in the flowers. See the swans on the water. They float like clouds in the sky. Fancy a pink swan in a large blue lake, throwing up sprays as white as snow over his bosom! Do you think that the earth was any more beautiful when it was first made? Is it not lovely now?”
There was no answer in words, but the young man’s eyes, glancing about, were eloquent, and his smile was one of peaceful delight.
“Come,” the girl said, “let’s play that this is really the Garden of Eden, and that you and I are just taking our first walk in it, wondering over everything. Let us look at ourselves in the water, and see if we are as beautiful as all the rest.”
He smiled at the childish fancy, took the hand she offered him, and went with her over the water. The swans passed by, and sent ripples over their mirror, but it was clear enough to give back the image of a
sweet oval face with bright eyes and lips, and of another face more richly tinted, peach-colored with sun and wind, with eyes that sparkled, and white teeth that laughed through a chestnut beard.
“Adam,” said the woman, “thou art more stately than the palm, and thine eyes have beams like the sun. Let us praise the Creator who hath formed thee in his own image!”
Dick’s hand and voice trembled, his face grew red in the water, then grew pale. “Eve,” he said, “thou art whiter and more graceful than the swan, and, while thou art speaking, the birds listen. I praise him who has given thee to me to be mine alone and for ever—my mate in this world and in the next.”