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Page 67
Except music, painting, sculpture,--all the arts and inspiration of
them,--waited on the nib of the pen, such talk as passed between these
two could not be written. Some things--and those not the least
profound and admirable of life--transcend the cunning of man to
interpret them, unless to an apprehension as fine as they! We are fain
to content ourselves with the husks.
"It must be happy there!" said Gnulemah, looking cityward. "So many
Balders and Gnulemahs!"
"Why happy?" asked the man of the world, with a faint smile.
"We are only two, and have known each other to-day and yesterday. But
they, you said, are as many as the stars, and have been together many
yesterdays."
Such was the woman's unclinched argument, leaving her listener to draw
the inference. He would not forestall her enlightenment from the grim
page of his own experience. But do not many pure and loving souls pass
through the world without once noticing how bad most of the roads are,
and how vexed the climates? So might not the earthly heaven of
Gnulemah's imagination tenderly blind her to the unheavenly earth of
Balder's knowledge?
Through his abstraction Balder felt on his hand a touch soft as the
flowing of a breath, yet pregnant of indefinite apprehension. When two
clouds meet, there is a hush and calm; but the first seeming-trifling
lightning-flash brings on the storm whereby earth's face is altered.
So Balder, full-charged as the thunder-cloud, awaited fearfully the
first vivid word which should light the way for those he had resolved
to speak.
"I see you with my open eyes, Balder, and touch you and hear you. Is
this the end I thought would come? Balder, are you greatest?" With
full trust she appealed to him to testify concerning himself. This was
the seriousness he had marked beneath the smile.
"Are you content it should be so?"
She plucked a blade of grass and tied it in a knot, and began,
drawing a trembling breath between each few words,--
"O Balder,--if I must kneel to you as to the last and greatest of
all,--if there is nothing too holy to be seen and touched,--if there
is no Presence too sublime for me to comprehend--"
"What then?" asked he, meeting her troubled look with a strong,
cheerful glance.
"Then the world is less beautiful than I thought it; the sun is less
bright, and I am no more pleasing to myself." Tears began to flow down
her noble cheeks; but Balder's eyes grew brighter, seeing which,
Gnulemah was encouraged to continue.
"How could I be happy? for either must I draw myself apart from you--O
Balder!--or else live as your equal, and so degrade you; for I am not
a goddess!"
"Then there are no goddesses on earth, nor gods! Gnulemah, you need
not shrink from me for that."
The beautiful woman smiled through her sparkling eyelashes. She could
love and reverence the man who, as a deity, bewildered and
disappointed her. But was the intuition therefore false which had
revealed to her the grand conception of a supreme, eternal God?
They sat silent for a while, and neither looked in the other's face.
They had struck a sacred chord, and the sweet, powerful sound thrilled
Balder no less than Gnulemah. But presently he looked up; his cheeks
warmed, and his heart swelled out. He was about to put in jeopardy his
most immediate jewel, and the very greatness of the risk gave him
courage. Not to the world, that could not judge him righteously, would
he confess his crime,--but to the woman he loved and who loved him.
Her verdict could not fail to be just and true.
Could a woman's judgment of her lover be impartial? Yes, if her
instincts be pure and harmonious, and her worldly knowledge that of a
child. Her discrimination between right and wrong would be at once
accurate and involuntary, like the test of poison. Love for the
criminal would but sharpen her intuition. The sentence would not be
spoken, but would be readable in eyes untainted alike by prejudice or
sophistry.
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