Her pitcher was thrown upon the sward and she came back a little way,
eye and heart and bosom calling to each other through the storm.
"Wha's callin' me?" she cried, her voice bleating like a lamb's.
"Oh, Janet, you know who's calling you--I have called you long," and
holy passion burned in the voice that spoke, leaped from the face that
came closer, still closer, to her own.
The white figure swayed in the darkness. Then the night glowed about her
like the noon, and the strong arms held her close, and time and sorrow
and God all gave her up ungrudgingly to the bliss they had planned
together; for in secret had they bedecked her as a bride adorned for her
husband.
* * * * *
It was long after, how long may not be told, for God would let no angel
mark the time; but the dark still was brooding, and the trees whispering
still, when he said: "To-morrow, Janet--all the years have made us
ready--yet not to-morrow, for it is to-day--to-day, please God."
She came closer, closer to him still, for hers had been an unsheltered
life, and the warmth was strangely sweet.
"Let us go to the spring, dear heart. Let us be children again."
Together they went on, these pilgrims of the night. While they were
going the day began to break. "The night is far spent," he heard her
whisper joyously.
They knelt together, nor thought it strange--for the youthful heart of
love was theirs again; and they drank from the unsleeping spring,
smiling back at them as their lips kissed its face together. The same
spring, the same lips--but purer both!
And as they stooped, two faces from the bosom of the water rose again to
meet them. Each of the lovers saw but one, for each saw the other's
face. And lo! each was the face of happy youth, the light of love
within its eyes, unchanged by years, except for a graver innocence. But
each saw the face that had looked up and smiled in the years so long
gone by.
The scientist and the philosopher and the deeply-learned in nature's
laws will read of this with generous disdain; but they forget that this
spring had its charter right from God, and was fed from other fountains
farther up the hill. Besides, optics is God's own science--and this was
the morning light.