She gave a short sigh and turned back into the wilderness of the drive. Infinite happiness shone on her face, a warm, spiritual radiance glowing through her delicate skin. Her lips were parted in a smile, a smile that seemed to flood down from her eyes, even to ripple from her glimmering hair.
“Come, let us go out together, watch the sea and talk. There are snowdrops in the meadow—my March children.”
The perfume of the rain-drenched cypresses breathed about them as they wound through the shrubbery. The wind shook spray from the thousand glittering fringes. Its voice was as the half-heard moan of violins. Together they came out into the meadow beyond the wavering, sun-streaked shadows of the trees. To the south the sea lifted up a band of silver towards the sky.
They stood under the shadow of the wall, where the wind tossed the cypress boughs upward into sudden gestures of despair. New life seemed to breathe in the breeze. Sun and shadow played over the world. The man and the girl looked in each other’s eyes a moment and were happy.
“You will tell me why you have come to me again,” Joan said.
Gabriel stood as though to take the salt sea-wind into his bosom. He smiled as he spoke to her.
“Because I have come by deeper truth.”
“You are married?”
“Yes.”
“Well?”