“You shall judge,” he said, “whether I desire to do you wrong or no. I thought once that I had no right to be near you, to hear you speak to me. It is the common verdict of the world that a man may not hold another woman to be nearer to his soul than is his wife. You understand me?”
“Yes,” she said, slowly, still looking in his face.
“Do you remember how the stars make one feel at night?”
“A yearning towards all that is noble, pure, and divine. Is there any evil in such a feeling?”
“And there are people in the world who seem to hang like stars over one’s soul. Is there sin in desiring to be near them, to be inspired towards truth by their beauty?”
“I desire to be near you often. You speak to me of all my heart desires to be. That is all.”
“I understand,” she said, very slowly, with a strange light in her eyes—“I understand. Let it be so. Say no more.”
As when the moon rises, revealing splendors dusky and magnificent in some silent plain, so this sympathy, this dual comprehension, called into sudden radiance all that was fairest in the hearts of the man and the girl. A great calm seemed to steal upon both, gradual and infinite. For them the Eternal Spirit lifted up its blessed flame. For them the roses rushed into ruddy joy. For them the sea echoed the parables of the stars.
The girl had drawn closer to Gabriel; her hand brushed against his.
“I have been very lonely,” she said, “and it is not good to be alone.”
“No,” he said, in a voice that was half a whisper.
“If men were not fools and if women had not received the poison of the serpent.”
They were both silent for a season. Joan stooped down and gathered snowdrops as they grew against the wall. The man watched her. The flowers seemed emblems of what their love might be.
“I may see you again, then,” she said, presently, with a deep tone of content.
He stood back from her and looked towards the horizon. There was a radiance upon his face as though light fell on him out of heaven.
“That I never touch you, never so much as touch your hand. That our flesh is severed absolutely; that only our spirits meet.”
So, under the sunlit sky and in the breath of the breeze, they swore both of them together a solemn oath, an oath to heaven.
OPHELIA STRONG had discovered her escape from domesticities a relief after the irritations and petulances of the last few months. Married life had proved nothing to her save the inconsiderate bigotry of her husband and the selfishness of men who refuse to reconsider habits formed in bachelor days. Ophelia believed herself to be a most misunderstood and ill-used person, a woman sacrificed to the over-fervid rashness of her own heart. Her love, a very shallow stream dependent largely on the rainfall of flattery, could easily be turned into other channels. A devotee of sensations, vain and convictionless, it was the most natural problem for her to consider how best she could frame life afresh in order to produce the most palatable and abundant satisfactions to press into the cup of pleasure.