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Page 23
"He comes clothed as an angel of light," said Adam.
They both watched the figure and the boat growing larger in perspective.
Features formed in the blur under the rower's hat; his individuality
sprung suddenly from a shape which a moment ago might have been any
man's.
"Oh, Adam, it will be Louis Satanette from Toronto," exclaimed Eva.
"And what's a Toronto man doing away up on Lake Magog?"
"What will a Glasgow man be doing away off here on Lake Magog?"
"Camping with his wife, and getting more religion than ever was taught
in the creeds."
"I'm not so sure of that, then."
"Because I don't love a Frenchman?"
"A French-Canadian. And a member of Parliament, too. Think of that at
his age! They say in Toronto he is one of the most promising men in the
provinces."
"Can he spear a salmon with a gaff, and does he know a pairch from a
lunge? And he couldn't be a Macgregor, anyhow, if he was first man in
Canada."
Eva laughed, and, forming her lips into a kiss, slyly impressed the same
upon the air, as if it could reach Adam through some invisible pneumatic
tube. He was not ashamed to make a return in kind; and, the boat being
now within their bay, they went down to the sand to meet it.
II.
FORBIDDEN FRUIT.
In spotless procession the days moved along until that morning on which
Adam dreamed his dream. He waked up trembling with joy and feeling the
tears run down his face. His watch ticked like the beating of a pulse
under his pillow, and he kept time to its rhythm with whispered words no
human ear would ever hear him utter with such rapture.
He had dreamed of breasting oceans and groping through darkness after
his wife until he was ready to die. Then, while he lay helpless, she
came to him and lifted him up in her arms. There was perfect and
unearthly union between them. His happiness became awful. He woke up
shaken by it as by a hand of infinite power.
Instead of turning toward her, he was still. Such experiences cannot be
told. The tongue falters and words limp when we try to repeat them to
the one beloved. A divine shame keeps us silent. Perhaps the glory of
that perfect love puts a halo around our common thoughts and actions for
days afterward, but no man or woman can fitly say, "I was in heaven with
you, my other soul, and the gladness was so mighty that I cried
helplessly long after I woke."
Adam kept his sleeve across his eyes. He had risked his life in many an
adventure without changing a pulse-beat, but now he was an infant in the
grasp of emotion.
When at last he cast a furtive glance at Eva's cot, she was not there.
She often slipped out in the early morning to drench herself with dew.
Once he had discovered her stooping on the sand, washing soiled clothes
in the lake. She clapped and rubbed the garments between soap and her
little fists. The sun was just coming up in the far northeast. Shapes of
mist gyrated slowly upward in the distance, and all the morning birds
were rushing about, full of eager business. Eva stopped her humming song
when she saw him, and laughed over her unusual employment. The first
time she ever washed clothes in her life she wanted to have Magog for
her tub and accomplish the labor on a vast and princess-like scale. Adam
helped her spread the wet things on bushes, and they both marvelled at
the bleached dazzle which the sun gave to those garments.
He did not move from the cot, hoping awhile that she might come in,
dew-footed, and yet kiss him. That clear shining of the face which one
sometimes observes in pure-minded devotees, or in young mothers over
their firstborn, gave him a look of nobility in the pallid shadow of the
tent.
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