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Page 91
Thus adorned by each other's hands, their love seemed greater than
before, and they laughed from pure delight. Their bonds looked
fragile; yet it would need a stronger wrench to part them than had
they been cables of iron or gold, unsustained by the subtile might of
love.
"Let us link them together," proposed Balder; and, loosening a link of
his chain, he reunited it inside Gnulemah's. "We must keep together,"
he continued with a smile, "or the marriage-bonds will break."
"Is this marriage, Balder? to be tied together with flowers?"
"One part of marriage. It shows the world that we belong only to each
other."
"How could they help knowing that,--for to whom else could we
belong? besides, why should they know?"
"Because," answered Balder after some consideration, "the world is
made in such a way, that unless we record all we do by some visible
symbol, everything would get into confusion."
"No no," protested Gnulemah, earnestly. "Only God should know how we
love. Must the world know our words and thoughts, and how we have sat
beneath these trees?--Then let us not be married!"
They were leaning side to side against the bench, along whose edge
Balder had stretched an arm to cushion Gnulemah's head. As he turned
to look at her, a dash of sunlight was quivering on her clear smooth
cheek, and another ventured to nestle warmly below the head of the
guardian serpent on her bosom, for Gnulemah and the sun had been
lovers long before Balder's appearance. Where breathed such another
woman? From the low turban that pressed her hair to the bright sandals
on her fine bronze feet, there was no fault, save her very uniqueness.
She belonged not to this era, but to the Golden Age, past or to come.
Could she ever be conformed to the world of to-day? Dared her lover
assume the responsibility of revealing to this noble soul all the
meanness, sophistries, little pleasures, and low aims of this
imperfect age? Could he change the world to suit her needs? or endure
to see her change to suit the world? Moreover, changing so much, might
she not change towards him? The Balder she loved was a grander man
than any Balder knew. Might she not learn to abhor the hand which
should unveil to her the Gorgon features of fallen humanity?--Much has
man lost in losing Paradise!
Contemplating Gnulemah's entrance into the outer world, Manetho had
anticipated her ruin from the flowering of the evil seed which he
believed himself to have planted in her. Might not the same result
issue from a precisely opposite cause? The Arcadian fashion in which
the lovers' passion had ripened must soon change forever. It was
perilous to advance, but to retreat was impossible. Balder was at bay;
had he loved Gnulemah less, he would have regretted Charon's
ferry-boat. But his love was greater for the danger and difficulty
wherewith it was fraught. He could not summon the millennium; well, he
might improve himself.
"If I could but shut her glorious eyes to all the shabby littleness
they will have to see, we might hazard the rest," he sighed to
himself. "If the pure visions of her maiden years might veil from her
those gross realities of every-day life! With what face shall I meet
her glance after it has suffered the first shock?"
Meanwhile her last objection remained unanswered, and Balder,
distrustful of his capacity, was inspired to seek inspiration from her
he would instruct.
"Tell me how you love me, Gnulemah," said he.
She roused herself, and bending her face to his, breathlessly kissed
his lips. Then she drooped her warm cheek on his shoulder, and
whispered the rest:--
"My love is to be near you, and to breathe when breathe; it is love to
become you, as water becomes wave. And love would make me sweet to
you, as honey and music and flowers. I love to be needed by you, as
you need food and drink and sleep; and my love will be loved, as God
loves the world."
To the lover these sentences were tender and sublime poetry. The tears
came to his eyes, hearing her speak out her loving soul so simply. He
had travelled through the world, while she had lived her life between
a wall and a precipice. But not the noisy, gaudy, gloomy crust which
is fresh to-day, and to-morrow hardens, and the next day crumbles, is
the world; but the fire-globe within: and Gnulemah was nearer that
fire than Balder. There was puissance in her simplicity,--in her
ignorance of that crust which he had so widely studied. Her knowledge
was more profound than his, for she had never learned to stultify it
with reasons.
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