Off over the rim of the world, washed by the crisp whitecaps of a mazarine sea, once was a coral island which no man’s chart has ever compassed. There had never been a gray day upon that coral island. The sunlight started there. Deep in its heart were bowered valleys and acres of flowers, and in the vesper hour sweet notes came down the evening silence, played upon reeds. It was the island of Arcadie. And far, far back before the lid of Pandora’s Box was opened, loosing its swarm of griefs and troubles upon the world, Everyman dwelt there and in the starlit dark Someone came to him, Someone who was part of himself—and covered him—with the wealth of her hair.
The gods were jealous of those who lived upon that coral island. They destroyed it. And ever since, Everyman has been hunting, hunting, up and down the worlds, for the one who came to him as a Whisper and a bit of Incense, in that dark. Sometimes that search ends beautifully. Nathan was not so far wrong in his youthful poetry after all.
“Forge!” cried the woman. “Nathaniel Forge!”
“Yes,” the man answered. He never knew why she spoke his name as she did. He only knew that, gazing deep into her face, he saw the blood die out and an expression come as though she would cry aloud. He knew that she dropped the book and half-raised her arms toward him.
A man’s brain may play queer pranks in life’s Great Moments. Came to Nathan then some lines he had written long ago, even as it was coming to the woman, intuitively, subconsciously, that both of them, in some far, previous incarnation had met so, had stood so, had spoken so,—long before.
“... the toil and tears we may know, dear heart,
Must some day reach an end;
Through miles and years we must search sometimes,
Ten thousand for one friend.
Yet some great noon in the sun-glare bright,