“Good-night, Adam.”
“Good-night, Eve. To-morrow”—
But she was gone, swiftly, and I stayed, as I was commanded. And my heart was beating as no clammer’s should. For a heart-beat of above seventy a minute is not fitting for a clammer. I sat, that night, with my book in my lap, staring into the dark shadows, and my candle sputtered and went out. Will this new light go out of my life, too?
I sat upon the edge of the bank, just where the sod breaks off to the sand, and I stared at the red sun, and he stared back at me. I sat close beside the place where the governess had sat,—very close,—but that place was vacant. For perhaps, I thought, perhaps— And the old sun spread his colors lavishly over the still water and upon the wet sand; his purples and his reds and his dainty shades of pink and blue and green. If I could mix my colors like that—or are they mixed? My scientific training does not help me much. It does not tell me why the colors are now brighter than they were yesterday, and now sombre. There is more than one kind of reflection, and science knows them not. And, as I stared and wondered—for these things are marvels—came a sweet voice behind me, and my heart leaped up into my throat and choked me. And I did not stop to reflect that it was not my heart at all, but some ganglion or plexus or what not. What cared I for ganglion or plexus?
“Fisherman,” said the sweet voice, “you are early.”
“Eve,” said I,—and my voice was steady,—“may a man come too early to Paradise? The woman comes after—though I have all my ribs.”
“Fisherman,” she said, “you are a strange man.”
“So I have heard,” I answered. “But you forget. A governess should have a better memory. I wonder that you can teach.”
“I am but a passable teacher, Adam. I cannot even teach well enough for one.”