“Why, Wanny,” she said, in surprise, “of course I believe you! It’s nothing to mind about. I didn’t mind.”
“Thank you. I—I’m glad you take it that way,” replied Adam. “I’m sorry I was so—so stupid.”
“How funny you are!” she exclaimed, and her gay laugh pealed out. “What’s there to be sorry about?... You see, I forgot it was getting late.... Ooooo! how good the water felt! I just couldn’t get enough.... You did scare me just a little. I heard you—and was scared before I looked.... Wanny, I guess I was imagining things—dreaming, you call it. I was all wet, and looking at myself in the sunlight. I’d never seen myself like that. I’d read of mermaids with shining scales of gold, and nymphs of the woods catching falling blossoms. And I guess I thought I was them—and everything.”
Then Adam scorned the old husk of worldliness that had incased his mind in his boyhood, and clung round it still. This child of nature had taught him many a thought-provoking lesson, and here was another, somehow elevating and on a level with his mental progress of the day. Genie had never lived in the world, nor had she been taught many of its customs. She was like a shy, wild young fawn; she was a dreaming, exuberant girl. Genie had been taught to write and study and read, and was far from being ignorant; but she had not understood the meaning of Adam’s apology. What struck Adam so deeply and confounded him again was the fact that her innocent and sweet smile now, as she gazed up at him, was little different from the one upon her face when she saw him staring at her nude. She had been surprised at his concern and had laughed at his contrition. And that low, rippling laugh, so full of vital and natural life, seemed to blow, as the desert wind blew worn and withered leaves, all of Adam’s recalled sophistications back into the past whence they had come.
Adam and Genie walked hand in hand down the long bowlder-strewn slope to the valley floor, where the cholla shone paling silver in gathering twilight, and the delicate crucifixion tree deceived the eye. The lonely November twilight deepened into night. The stars shone bright. The cool wind blew. The sage rustled.
* * * * *
Sleep did not soon woo Adam’s eyelids this night, with the consequence that he awoke a little later than his usual hour. The rose of the dawn had bloomed.
Then Adam, on his knees by the brown running stream, in the midst of his ablutions, halted to stare at the sunrise. Had it ever before been so strangely beautiful? During his sleep the earth had revolved, and, lo! here was the sun again. Wonderful and perennial truth! Not only had it revolved, but it had gone on its mysterious journey, hurtling through space with inconceivable rapidity. While he slept! Again he had awakened. A thousand years ago he had awakened just like this, so it seemed, to the sunrise, to the loneliness of lonely places, to the beauty of nature, to the joy of life. He sensed some past state, which, when he thought about it, faded back illusively and was gone. But he knew he had lived somewhere before this. All of life was in him. The marvelous spirit he felt now would never die.
* * * * *
There dawned upon Adam a sudden consciousness of Genie’s beauty. She was the last realized and the most beautiful creation of the desert around him.