"Well!" he said--"Are you beginning to remember the happiness we have
so often thrown away for a trifle?"
I was silent, though I folded my hand closer over his. The soft white
sleepy radiance of the moon on the scarcely moving water around us made
everything look dream-like and unreal, and I was hardly conscious of my
own existence for the moment, so completely did it seem absorbed by
some other influence stronger than any power I had ever known.
"Here are we two,"--he continued, softly--"alone with the night and
each other, close to the verge of a perfect understanding--and
yet--determined NOT to understand! How often that happens! Every
moment, every hour, all over the world, there are souls like ours,
barred severally within their own shut gardens, refusing to open the
doors! They talk over the walls, through the chinks and crannies, and
peep through the keyholes--but they will not open the doors. How
fortunate am I to-night to find even a port-hole open!"
He turned up his face, full of light and laughter, to mine, and I
thought then, how easy it would be to fling away all my doubts and
scruples, give up the idea of making any more search for what perhaps I
should never find, and take the joy which seemed proffered and the love
which my heart knew was its own to claim! Yet something still pulled me
back, and not only pulled me back, but on and away--something which
inwardly told me I had much to learn before I dared accept a happiness
I had not deserved. Nevertheless some of my thoughts found sudden
speech.
"Rafel--" I began, and then paused, amazed at my own boldness in thus
addressing him. He drew closer to me, the boat he stood in swaying
under him.
"Go on!" he said, with a little tremor in his voice--"My name never
sounded so sweetly in my own ears! What is it you would have me do?"
"Nothing!" I answered, half afraid of myself as I spoke--"Nothing--but
this. Just to think that I am not merely wilful or rebellious in
parting from you for a little while--for if it is true--"
"If what is true?" he interposed, gently.
"If it is true that we are friends not for a time but for eternity"--I
said, in steadier tones--"then it can only be for a little while that
we shall be separated. And then afterwards I shall be quite sure--"
"Yes--quite sure of what you are sure of now!" he said--"As sure as any
immortal creature can be of an immortal truth! Do you know how long we
have been separated already?"