The morning dawned. The morning of their one day.
Nature had done her best for them and made it all that a May day should
be. There was not one tint, nor tone, nor bit of fragrance lacking.
Silver-throated birds flooded the world with songs of love. The very air
seemed full of beauty and passion and the glory and joy of life in the
dawn of its fullness.
Their arrangements had been hasty, but complete. Paul had stolen away
from Lucerne in the middle of the night, to be ready to welcome his
darling at the-first break of the morning; and it was at a delightfully
early hour that they met at the little hotel on the Bürgenstock where
his mother's love-dream had waxed to its idyllic perfection,
one-and-twenty years ago. They sat on the balcony and ate their simple
breakfast, looking down to where the reflection of the snow-crowned
mountains trembled in the limpid lake.
Opal had never before looked so lovely, he thought. She was gowned in
the simplest fashion in purest white, as a bride should be, her glorious
hair arranged in a loose, girlish knot, while her lustrous eyes were
cast down, shyly, and her cheeks were flushed--flushed with the
revelations and memories of the night just passed--flushed with the
promise of the day just dawning--flushed with love, with slumbering,
smouldering passion--with wifehood!
How completely she was his when she had once surrendered!
In their first kiss of greeting, they bridged over, in one ecstatic
moment, the hours of their brief separation. When he finally withdrew
his lips from hers, with a deep sigh of momentary satisfaction, she
looked up into his eyes with something of the old, capricious mischief
dancing in her own.
"Let us make the most of our day, darling, our one day!" she said. "We
must not waste a single minute of it."
Opal had stolen away from Lucerne and had come up the mountain
absolutely unattended. She would share her secret with no one, she said,
and Paul had acquiesced. And now he took her up in his arms as one would
carry a little child, and bore her off to the suite he had engaged for
them. What a bit of a thing she was to wield such an influence over a
man's whole life!
A pert little French maid waited upon them. She eyed with great favor
the _distingué_ young monsieur, and his _charmante épouse!_ There was a
knowing twinkle in her eye--she had not been a _femme de chambre_ even a
little while without learning to scent a _lune de miel!_ And this
promised to be especially _piquante_. But Paul would have none of her,
and she tripped away disappointed of her coveted _divertissement_.
Paul was very jealous and exacting and even domineering this morning,
and would permit no intrusion. He would take care of madame, he had
informed the girl, and when she had taken herself away, he repeated it
emphatically. Opal was his little girl, he said, and he was going to pet
and coddle her himself. _Femme de chambre_ indeed! Wasn't he worth a
dozen of the impertinent French minxes! Wanted to coquette with him,
most likely--thought he might be ready to yawn over madame's charms! She
could keep her pretty ankles out of his sight--he wasn't interested in
them!
How Paul thrilled at the touch of everything Opal wore! Soft delicious
things they were, and he handled them with an awkward reverence that
brought tears to her eyes. They spoke a strange, shy language of their
own--these little, filmy bits of fine linen.
Oh, but it was good, thought Opal, to be taken care of like this!--to be
on these familiar terms with the Boy she loved--to give him the right to
love her and do these little things, so sacred in a woman's life. And to
Paul it meant more than even she guessed. It was such a new world to
him. He felt that he was treading on holy ground, and, for the moment,
was half-afraid.
And thus began their one day--the one day that was to know no yesterday,
and no tomorrow!
They found it hard to remember that part of it at all times. He would
grow reminiscent for an instant, and begin, "Do you remember--" and she
would catch him up quickly with a whispered, "No yesterday, Paul!" And
again, it would be his turn, for a troubled look would cloud the joy of
her eyes, and she would start to say, "What shall I do--" or "When I go
to Paris--" and Paul would snatch her to his heart and remind her that
there was "No tomorrow!"
All the forenoon she lay in his arms, crying out with little
inarticulate gurgles of joy under his caresses, lavishing a whole
lifetime's concentrated emotion upon him in a ferocity of passion that
seemed quenchless.
And Paul was in the seventh heaven--mad with love! He was learning that
there were tones in that glorious voice that he had never heard before,
depths in those eyes that he had never fathomed--and those tones, those
depths, were all for him, for him alone--aye, had been waiting there
through all eternity for his awakening touch.
"Opal," he said, earnestly, "perhaps it was here--on this very spot, it
may be, who knows--that my mother gave herself to my father!
But she could only smile at him through fast-gathering tears--strange
tears of mingled joy and wonder and pain.
And he covered her face, her neck, her shoulders with burning kisses,
and cried out in an ecstasy of bliss, "Oh, my love! My life!"
And thus the morning hours died away.