The grey heaven bent above them as if in benediction. The stern outlines of the old boulders faded into the dusk which seemed to enwrap them as if eager to mitigate their severity. The soft greys of the barren landscape, the tender paleness of the sky, seemed to hold the two lovers in a mystic embrace, isolating them in the radiance of their own love, even as the circumstances of a United Destiny were to hedge these two for ever from the world. There were jagged stones hidden by the tender mists of twilight, and bitter herbs and thistles grew unseen about them, but to their eyes the barren reaches of Mullein meadow blossomed like a rose. Doubtless, they two, like all we mortals, would some day “fall upon the thorns of life and bleed,” but together surely no terror would overcome them nor any despair make its home in their hearts, so long as across the chasms in the life-road they could touch each other’s hands. The first rapture of their meeting vanished, as a bird soaring in the blue disappears from vision, which yet does not feel a sense of loss, because though the eye sees not the heart knows that afar in the empyrean the triumphant wings still beat.
“Oh, so much, so very much—and, Lanty, you like me?”
“Like! Oh, Mabella, since that day in the hayfield when I _knew_, you can’t imagine what life has seemed to me since then—surely it is ages ago, and how I have thought of you! Dear, I can’t say all I mean—but you know—Mabella, _you know_, don’t you, sweetheart?”
“I hope so,” she said sweetly, and then, with the inconsequence of women, her eyes filled with tears.
“May God treat me as I treat you,” said Lanty solemnly.
There was a pause, such a pause as when the sacramental wine dies upon the palate.
“No, sweet one,” he said; “I understand all about it. I will be good to you and take care of you, and, oh, my own dear girl, I am so happy.”
And then lighter talk possessed them, and they recounted incidents, which, with the happy egotism of lovers, they chose to consider as important events because they had a special significance for them. The path to love is like a sea voyage. There are always more remarkable occurrences and extraordinary coincidences in one’s own experience than in anyone else’s, and these two were no exception to the rule. They discovered that upon several notable occasions they had been thinking _exactly_ the same thing, and upon other occasions each had known _exactly_ what the other was going to say before the words were uttered, and they talked on until they were environed in an atmosphere of wonder and awe, and looked upon each other startled by the recognition of their superiority, and the world was but a little place compared with the vastness of each other’s eyes.